The 2011 measles outbreak and vaccines in Nature

I was debating what to blog about last night, and it wasn’t easy. We’re in the midst of yet another embarrassment of riches, as far as topics relevant to this blog go. Then I noticed something that I considered to be quite appropriate, given that we are now right in the middle of the yearly autism quackfest known as Autism One in Chicago. This week, Nature published an issue with a special section devoted specifically to vaccines. The timing seemed just too deliciously appropriate to ignore. Think of it. In Chicago (well, Lombard), there is a collection of anti-vaccine cranks meeting to present fallacious “science” claiming that vaccines cause autism and all manner of chronic health problems. In contrast, one of the oldest and most distinguished scientific journals in existence publishes several articles in a single issue about vaccines.

The article discussing the case of measles is particularly relevant today, as we are in the middle of a resurgence of measles cases, both here in the U.S. and a much worse outbreak in Europe. In the U.S. we have had thus far this year 118 cases of confirmed measles, the most cases since 1996. Of these cases, 47 resulted in hospitalization and 9 in pneumonia. Fortunately, none had encephalitis, and none died, but that’s only because the risk of encephalitis is between 1:1,000 and 1:5,000. In an outbreak of 118, there’s only around a 10% chance (at the most) of having a case of measles encephalitis among the children. However, the more children there are who are infected, the greater the chance of complications such as encephalitis, and let’s not forget that we already have an 8% pneumonia rate.

Fortunately, MMR vaccine uptake in the U.S. remains generally high, although there are increasingly pockets of low uptake susceptible to outbreaks. Indeed, that’s what appears to be happening. As reported in Nature and the MMWR report cited above, measles was in essence eliminated from the U.S. in 2000. This was not easy to do; measles is one of the most contagious viruses that exist. Indeed, it’s the contagiousness of the measles virus that has allowed it to find its way back into the U.S. from other countries, as described in the MMWR report:

Among the 118 cases, 105 (89%) were import-associated, of which 46 (44%) were importations from at least 15 countries (Table), 49 (47%) were import-linked, and 10 (10%) were imported virus cases. The source of 13 cases not import-associated could not be determined. Among the 46 imported cases, most were among persons who acquired the disease in the WHO European Region (20) or South-East Asia Region (20), and 34 (74%) occurred in U.S. residents traveling abroad.

More worrisome, of the 47 hospitalized patients, all but one were unvaccinated, and the statistics were:

Unvaccinated persons accounted for 105 (89%) of the 118 cases. Among the 45 U.S. residents aged 12 monthsâ19 years who acquired measles, 39 (87%) were unvaccinated, including 24 whose parents claimed a religious or personal exemption and eight who missed opportunities for vaccination. Among the 42 U.S. residents aged â¥20 years who acquired measles, 35 (83%) were unvaccinated, including six who declined vaccination because of philosophical objections to vaccination. Of the 33 U.S. residents who were vaccine-eligible and had traveled abroad, 30 were unvaccinated and one had received only 1 of the 2 recommended doses.

Do you see the pattern here?

Leaving a child unvaccinated leaves that child at a greatly increased susceptibility to measles and therefore a highly elevated risk of catching the virus when exposed. This is particularly true when enough people refuse vaccines to compromise herd immunity, so that the unvaccinated can no longer rely on the herd, which they’ve gotten away with doing in the past. Nowhere is this more evident than in Europe, where more than 6,500 cases were reported in 2010, and we have Andrew Wakefield to thank for decreased vaccination rates that are only now starting to recover, as this story in–of all places–The Huffington Post describes:

To prevent measles outbreaks, officials need to vaccinate about 90 percent of the population. But vaccination rates across Europe have been patchy in recent years and have never fully recovered from a discredited 1998 British study linking the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella to autism. Parents abandoned the vaccine in droves and vaccination rates for parts of the U.K. dropped to about 50 percent.

The disease has become so widespread in Europe in recent years that travelers have occasionally exported the disease to the U.S. and Africa.

Although overall vaccine uptake rates are high, thanks to Andrew Wakefield, there are pockets of children whose parents fear the vaccine more than measles and have therefore not vaccinated. These pockets have been enough to allow measles not just to come roaring back in Europe, but to allow Europe to export its measles to the U.S.

Perhaps the most interesting perspective this week on the issue of vaccine rejectionism is the second article I cited above, Vaccines: The real issues in vaccine safety by Roberta Kwok, who notes in the beginning of her article that “hysteria about false vaccine risks often overshadows the challenges of detecting the real ones.” She begins by citing the case of John Salamone. We’ve met him before in the context of my review of Paul Offit’s most recent book, Deadly Choices: How the Anti-vaccine Movement Threatens Us All. Salamone’s son is an example of a real adverse reaction to a vaccine. Basically, his son got polio from the live oral polio vaccine, a known complication. His son got that vaccine, even though an inactivated polio virus vaccine known to be safer was available at the time, because the oral polio vaccine was cheaper and more easily administered. As a result, Salamone became a real vaccine safety activist, in contrast to the anti-vaccine activists at Generation Rescue masquerading as “vaccine safety” activists. He and other parents worked together to effect change, and the U.S. shifted to the safer vaccine in the late 1990s.

Kwok’s overall point is that these fake vaccine safety scares, such as the widespread belief that vaccines cause autism, have made it more difficult to identify real vaccine safety issues:

Vaccines face a tougher safety standard than most pharmaceutical products because they are given to healthy people, often children. What they stave off is unseen, and many of the diseases are now rare, with their effects forgotten. So only the risks of vaccines, low as they may be, loom in the public imagination. A backlash against vaccination, spurred by the likes of Andrew Wakefield — a UK surgeon who was struck off the medical register after making unfounded claims about the safety of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine — and a litany of celebrities and activists, has sometimes overshadowed scientific work to uncover real vaccine side effects. Many false links have been dispelled, including theories that the MMR vaccine and the vaccine preservative thimerosal cause autism. But vaccines do carry risks, ranging from rashes or tenderness at the site of injection to fever-associated seizures called febrile convulsions and dangerous infections in those with compromised immune systems.

Serious problems are rare, so it is hard to prove that a vaccine causes them. Studies to confirm or debunk vaccine-associated risks can take a long time and, in the meantime, public-health officials must make difficult decisions on what to do and how to communicate with the public.

Unfortunately, links are often not clear, and during the period of uncertainty between the first report of a possible vaccine complication and studies that either confirm or refute the link, public health officials are forced to make decisions on incomplete evidence. One current example is the possible link between the H1N1 vaccine Pandemrix and narcolepsy in young people. It is not yet clear whether this association is spurious or likely to indicate causation. Another aspect of this issue is whether there are genetic susceptibilities to adverse reactions due to vaccines. Contrary to what the anti-vaccine movement claims, scientists have never denied that there might be genetic factors resulting in increased susceptibility to vaccine injury. However, in science actual evidence is required, rather than speculation, and what we have now on this issue is, for the most part, speculation. It’s also not at all a straightforward issue to determine genetic determinants of increased risk for adverse reactions. Just as finding a genetic cause of autism has been difficult and full of dead ends, despite clear evidence of a strong heritable component, finding evidence of a genetic predisposition to vaccine injury is anything but a trivial task. Moreover, even in children who might have such a hypothetical predisoposition to vaccine injury, when the risk-benefit calculation is done it may well end up that the benefits of vaccines still outweigh the risks. Such would seem to be the case for children with mitochondrial disorders.

So how do we convince parents that the fear mongering by the anti-vaccine movement about vaccines and autism (or vaccines and all the other the movement tries to link with them, for that matter) is without basis in evidence and science and that it is safe to vaccinate? I agree with Julie Leask is at the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance, Discipline of Paediatrics and Child Health, School of Public Health, University of Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia, who wrote the last article that caught my interest, Target the fence-sitters. This is the way to go; the hard core anti-vaccine believers are not going to change their minds, no matter how much evidence you throw at them. We’ve seen this time and time again right here on this very blog, right here in the comments, stretching back over six years.

That’s why it’s a waste of time and effort to try to change the mind of the likes of J.B. Handley, Jenny McCarthy, Barbara Loe Fisher, Ginger Taylor, and others. There was a time when I thought that I could, but six and a half years of beating my head against the wall has taught me that I’m about as likely to succeed in changing their minds as I am to convince the Pope to become an atheist. It’s just not going to happen; these people are true believers in what, for all intents and purposes, can be considered a religion. The bottom line is that I don’t really care about changing, for example, J.B. Handley’s mind; I only care about countering his influence whenever possible. The fence-sitters can still be reached. They haven’t (yet) fallen down the rabbit hole of pseudoscience, autism “biomed,” and conspiracy mongering. There’s still hope to reach them, and reach them I try to do, using a variety of techniques ranging from pure sarcasm and full frontal assault to humor to dispassionate discussions of scientific papers. What works the best? I really don’t know, because I have no way of measuring. I do, however, keep trying.

In the meantime, as the MMWR report on the 2011 measles outbreak in the U.S. and the articles in Nature demonstrate, the anti-vaccine movement is doing real damage as it reverses hard-won gains made against measles over the last four decades.

492 Comments

And, what won’t be in the MMWR that you quoted are the new cases in Charlottesville, VA that my daughter told me about yesterday. An woman contracted measles in India, was infectious on her plane trip home and, the day she finally was diagnosed, had spent most of her time at a local shopping mall. Currently, (as of yesterday’s news), she has infected 2 other people who have been confirmed to have measles. News reports are telling people who have any symptoms of measles to stay at home and contact their doctors. Hopefully, vaccine levels are high enough that the outbreak is contained.

I was gonna bring up the Charlottesville cases, the first here in 20 years apparently, but MI Dawn beat me to it.

This sort of thing makes me feel better, from a local school where an exposure occurred: “Parents of non-vaccinated children who were in attendance on May 20 have been told that their children are to stay off school grounds for the rest of the school year, except to attend todayâs clinic.”

At the end of the day yesterday while I was taking the bus from the lab back to the parking lot I saw a big sign about measles vaccinations outside of the emergency room, so the UVA hospital at least is taking this seriously.

And just to nitpick (and a bit of good news) the downtown mall the person was at is an outdoor place, a closed off road with boutiques, bars and restaurants, so it could have been worse if it was a real shopping mall.

I do wonder what it will take to get some of these non-vaccinators to take the risk seriously. We’re (you’re?) fortunate that there have been no deaths in the US outbreaks, but it’s just a matter of time. Deaths are a statistical inevitability if a growing portion of the population is left vulnerable to outbreak.

My approach involves examining and revealing the underlying motives of anti-vaxxers to fence-sitters. I believe that we must clearly differentiate between distraught parents caught in the daily struggles of post-institutional society ( heart-rending stories at AoA lately) from the leaders of the movement *whatever* their motives including those who may also be parents and using the movement as avenue toward fame and recognition as well. Additionally, the movement as a means to monetary compensation should be highlighted.

Anti-vaccinationism is a strong component of natural health advocates’ agenda : vaccines are anathema as they are decisively *not* a natural product *and* they have improved public health vastly thus strongly supporting SBM’s position. I often hear woo-meisters state how vaccines are *neither* safe nor effective. Speculative connections between vaccines and serious illnesses are recounted as though they were Holy Writ; charts are displayed “proving” how the introduction of vaccines did *not* lead to a decrease in deaths ( often with missing sections of data). It was “improved sanitation” or suchwhat. You know the drill.

Truly, vaccines are a threat to the health of woo-meisters’ *enterprises*: since they have been used by pseudo-science as a means to discourage faith in SBM, if they are shown to be relatively safe and even ( gulp!) useful, it may serve to illustrate the untrust-worthy and mercenary nature of those who are selling the bill of goods. I’d love to see woo done in by its own *bete noire*. Jabbed!

Was this a mild case of rubella (sometimes referred to a bit vaguely as a ‘vaccine reaction’)? Or something full-blown enough to cause the attending’s disbelief? If the latter, then perhaps she would want to see if there are any potential signs of immunodeficiency.

This is basically a derail but, sine immunity to rubella was brought up:

I grew up when DPT, smallpox and polio was basically it. I got rubeola (regular measles) and supposedly rubella (“German measles”) twice! We were told that my first case was too mild and “didn’t take”. Is this a real thing? Is there a third ailment that could be mistaken for rubella? Haven’t thought about it for 50 years, but that just triggered the question in my mind. Sorry for the diversion.

The MMWR article is quite alarming. In France, where many of the cases in the USA were imported from, there is a large outbreak of measles with over 10,000 cases reported so far this year. Of note, 89% of the 118 reported cases for the USA occured in individuals who were not vaccinated against with the MMR vaccine. The largest outbreak in the USA occured in a community that was fearful of the MMR vaccine due to it’s fraudulent link to autism. Thirteen years after Dr Wakefield’s inaccurate Lancet article, we are still seeing the negative effects on humanity. We need to make a stronger effort to reverse this effect, or smallpox will be the last disease that we will be able to say has been eradicated from the earth.

Yeah. I tried to find some info on the Boston cases, but the Boston and MA Dept. of Public Health web sites aren’t very informative. The last BPH news release was back when there were only 2 confirmed and 3 suspected.

I’ve been so alarmed by this “outbreak,” I too had to do several posts on it this week. It seems West Virginia, due to their stringent vaccine laws, remains one of the few safe places left in America. I suggest we all make our way there with great haste.

Not only have we had an outbreak in Minnesota, many of the cases are un-vaccinated, in the Somali community, and Dr. Wakefield himself has visited this community three times, as recently as March 24, stirring up fears.

MPR had a program on autism yesterday. I could not bear to listen for fear of what callers might say, but here it is:

Lets see, in the first months of 2011, there have been (according to the WHO-CISID) 380 cases of measles* in the UK and 7,380 cases of measles in France. For comparison, there were 397 cases in the UK and 5,139 in France in all of 2010.

[*Note: laboratory-confirmed cases – 377 in the UK and 2,139 in France so far in 2011.]

That’s impressive work! I wonder if they’ll be touting this success at the “Autism One” conference (where Andy Wakefield is giving a talk on “Munchausen’s disease by proxy”).

People have asked why there has been such a problem with measles outbreaks recently, when the vaccines uptake hasn’t declined by much. Well, there are two reasons.

First, a decline in vaccine uptake from 96% to 92% – which doesn’t seem like much – means a doubling in the number of unvaccinated people (4% to 8%).

Second, people who refuse to vaccinate their children tend to be socially inter-related; they hang about together, socialise and have “play dates” with each other and attend the same private schools. This facilitates the spread among the unvaccinated by putting them in close contact. The people who don’t vaccinate because they are too busy, too poor or just don’t like needles don’t cluster together as much.

So, where there are groups of vaccine “refuseniks”, expect to find measles outbreaks. Previously, this was limited to certain religious groups, but Dr. Wakefield and others, like “Dr. Bob” Sears and “Dr. Jay” Gordon, have made vaccine refusal non-denominational. Now anybody can take part in a measles outbreak, no matter what their religious beliefs might be!

1) Prometheus says 92% are vaccinated against the measles (does the non-vaccinated rate include those too young?)
2) 89% of the measles cases are for non-vaccinated people.

So non-vaxxed people make up 8% of the population, but 90% of those who get the measles.*** And there are people who still claim that vaccination doesn’t work? The reduction of measles was due to sanitation? We can avoid measles by not letting ourselves get exposed? (that’s Th1Th2, btw) Apparently, it is just a coincidence that non-vaccinated folks are either extremely unsanitary or incapable of avoiding infection.

***By my math, that means that non-vaccinated people are 100 times more likely to become infected than the vaccinated, right?

The “vaccinated toddler” referred to in the article had received only one measles vaccine…health officials state that the child is among the ~ 5 % of children who don’t get immunized against the measles virus with just one of the two shot series. Following completion of the two-shot series, close to 100 % of vaccine recipients are immune.

The “vaccinated toddler” referred to in the article had received only one measles vaccine…health officials state that the child is among the ~ 5 % of children who don’t get immunized against the measles virus with just one of the two shot series. Following completion of the two-shot series, close to 100 % of vaccine recipients are immune.

Following completion of the two-shot series, close to 100 % of vaccine recipients are immune.

So what do you care if someone chooses to not vaccinate. It’s their choice they take responsibility for their choices.

And I know what you’re going to say next. But, but that .1% makes up a lot of children, and, and they don’t have a choice. They rely on herd immunity. Our precious mathematically flawed misinterpreted vague theory.

So is this what the crux of the vaccine argument has come down to? You do it for the medically fragile? The theoretical ones for whom the vaccine fails?

Well why don’t you just state that from the beginning? Let the public and all of the mothers know what your true intentions are. Them vaccinating is not really for them it’s for the idea of supposedly protecting medically damaged children. If they(vaccine recipient) so happen to benefit also, then great but it’s not really about them it’s for the others who have co-morbidity issues.

BTW, does how are you going to stop all of the other microbes from infecting and killing them? How are they going to survive the common cold and other viruses? More vaccines for the public? When will your control psychosis stop.

@ Augustine: Your (too) obvious dig at my deceased son who was medically labile…not medically damaged…is a new low even for you. My son received his immunizations against measles in infancy. Tell us again how your two (imaginary) healthy children are un-immunized.

Medically labile (not medically damaged) children include children who are undergoing treatment for cancer or have an immuno-suppressive disorder or disease. Children and adults who have undergone stem cell therapy and those who are on immuno-suppressive treatments following organ transplants are also at great risk. “Healthy” infants, who are too young to have received MMR vaccine depend on the herd immunity in their community to protect them from this potentially deadly virus.

“So what do you care if someone chooses to not vaccinate. It’s their choice they take responsibility for their choices.”
Augustine, there is a small problem with your thinking. It is the PARENT who decides not to vaccinate, it is the KID who gets sick.
Most States do not allow parents to refuse medical treatment for their kids on religious or other grounds. Or maybe I should reword that – they can refuse treatment, but when the kid dies they get prosecuted and sent to jail. Why should it not the the same for vaccination?

No. It has already been explained to you what the mutliple convergent lines of pro-vaxx reasoning are. The good people here have expended significant effort and time trying to teach you what those lines of reasoning are.

How very dare you have the arrogance and insolence to throw all that away just to concentrate on one small part and misrepresent it.

Your attempt at creating a simplistic strawman in order to accuse others of mental illness and sociopathy has been noted.

Your attempts at using the memories of other people’s late children has been noted.

You are a vile, malicious, vicious, vindictive and mercurial little shit. As long as you continue to mistreat people this way, your reputation will be to shit.

Kindly leave these kind people alone and take your evil elsewhere.

You are not worthy, and would have been banned ages ago, if it were not for Oracs exremely forgiving policy.

It is the PARENT who decides not to vaccinate, it is the KID who gets sick.

Oh, you would rather the state to decide? Nice political ideology there, patriotic, liberty defending, sailor. You mix your politics with your science very well.

Most States do not allow parents to refuse medical treatment for their kids on religious or other grounds.

My kids are not sick. Why would they need medical “treatment”?

Or maybe I should reword that – they can refuse treatment, but when the kid dies they get prosecuted and sent to jail. Why should it not the the same for vaccination?

Deal. Only if the doctor, nurse, receptionist, pharmacist, pharmacy, pharmaceutical company, CDC,that HHS lady with the cocked head, and local health department can be sued into oblivion every time a vaccine causes injury AND every time the vaccine fails to prevent the disease that it is advertised for.

BTW, is this stuff in a science handbook somewhere? Do you just make this stuff up as you go along developing your philosophy and politics?

“Healthy” infants, who are too young to have received MMR vaccine depend on the herd immunity in their community to protect them from this potentially deadly virus.

Just more fear/disease mongering. In your “humans need medicine to survive because they are just weak animals” bias you left out the fact they they should have maternal fetal antibodies which protect them. When this happens they are in fact NOT relying on herd immunity.

@ Roadstergal: Well, the part you describe is natural _however_ do you seriously believe that our pristine woo-meisters will accept *anything* made in a *lab*(( shudder)) if it is not one of their own brand of supplements, superfoods, or dried vegetable powders? ‘Fraid not!

Cranks and crackpots abound, everyone’s an expert on the internet, and deep knowledge and expertise (as exemplified by our esteemed host) just mean you’ve been brainwashed by the establishment. Science would be so much easier if we were allowed to just make shit up!

Excuse me if I’ve missed mention of this elsewhere on RI, but there are two good current articles on autism thanks to Psychology Today.

Both are authored by physicians, and both cast serious doubt on the assertion that there is an “autism epidemic” and that any environmental toxin (i.e vaccines and/or substances in them) is driving an increase in autism.

Allen Frances M.D. (who chaired the DSM-IV Task Force) had this to say in his blog article:

DSM IV gave autism purchase by introducing a milder form close to the populous boundary to normality. Then autism took flight on the wings of definitional diffusion, internet contagion, financial incentive, and naÃ¯ve interpretation of epidemiological results. The overall rate of autistic symptoms is probably the same as it always has been since time immemorial- only the naming of them has changed.

These are the sorts of articles that provide an excellent and vital complement to scientific journal studies, utilizing the popular press to clarify critical issues that antivaxers love to obfuscate.

You mentioned how anti-vax can be compared to its own religion, so I had to add this to the comments.

When I was first exposed to the existence of people who opposed vaccines, I had a sneaking feeling of familiarity about the ‘arguments’ I was hearing at a fairly regular interval. They sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was.. exactly.

So…
I decided to wander over to the trusty google, and searched for ‘the origins of anti-vaccine’. Then I read it;
Wow.
I sat there stunned.

Doesn’t it seem strange for a science article to have such a suggestive tone? But I guess if your focus is pointed in a direction it’s near impossible to be aware of much else. And yes, I would have my children vaccinated if I had any.

In the UK/ NHS where I work,in our local Strategic Health Authority area,we have had 12 confirmed cases in the past week from a school camp.In addition I have seen 2 cases already this year in my own practice.

Patanjali Sutra 3:17
“A word, its meaning, the idea behind it, and it’s effect on the body are normally confused because of superimposition upon one another. By concentrating on the word [or sound] produced by any being, knowledge of its meaning is obtained.”

The word ‘vaccine’ was coined recently, but the sound of the word itself has been in use, almost certainly, for thousands of years.

It can be found in the Koran, in the form ‘Backsheen’, meaning ‘Boy of little worth’.

Going back to unattested darker times where the word itself is not found, we find much reference to Baks, Vax, Baccus etc.. The god of you-know-what?

The ‘Baksheen’, would have been the masculine form of the word for ‘Male sacrifice to Baccus’.

Clearly the circumstances under which this word was used would have been extremely memorable circumstances and, if you are familiar with the TEEM hypothesis (trauma-encoded-emotional-memory), would certainly be passed down to our children through our genetic memory (the one that recognises the sound and shape and threat/food potential of a bear even though you’ve never been around a bear).

The ‘Anti-Bakseen’ movement would have been the very first human rights movement. Certainly male sacrifice would have been phased out before female sacrifice. Or so the story goes.

So really we are fighting against the descendants of people who were vehemently opposed to feeding little boys to god.

That’s why, when they talk about ‘Big Pharma poisoning our kids’ what they really *feel* is ‘Stop feeding our kids to God!’

Sometimes you have to dig a little deeper than ‘from cows’. Sometimes you have to dig the bullshit too.

The thing that bothers me most about Augustine is not his opposition to vaccines, but his manifest lack of care for anyone outside of his own family. It’s as if the rest of the world didn’t exist – he and they are existing on their own little island, unable to be affected by (or to affect) anyone else. Compassion and caring for other people don’t seem to be part of his mental vocabulary.

Being a good citizen, on the other hand, requires caring for other people as well as for oneself and one’s family. When I was a child I got measles and spent two weeks in bed. I never got German measles (rubella) and a few years ago it occurred to me that I should get the vaccine – not because I was so afraid of the illness for myself, but because I didn’t want to run the risk of getting it and unknowingly infecting a pregnant woman. What we do, how we live our lives, does affect other people, and we should do our best to care for them as well.

Augie consistently underestimates the risk of vaccine-preventable diseases by orders of magnitude. He’s in denial about the possible consequences of his family contracting one of these illnesses. I don’t think he gives a shit about his own family (whoever they may be, poor souls). He’s only interested in sticking it to all the experts to boost his own pathetic ego. He is addicted to the warm slimy feel of contempt for humanity.

Are they supposed to die of measles? And what is a “full strength disease”?

Per the CDC web site: “MMR is an attenuated (weakened) live virus vaccine. This means that after injection, the viruses grows (sic) and causes a harmless infection in the vaccinated person with very few, if any, symptoms.”
Note that this is a live virus vaccine. It causes an infection according to commonly accepted definitions of the words “live” and “infection”.
By contrast, the wild measles strains do typically cause noticeable symptoms and complications in a significant percentage of cases. These strains which are communicated naturally through the air are the ones I colloquially referred to as the full strength version.
Your other question of predestination is a philosophical one that I do not choose to respond to in this forum as it is irrelevant to the discussion.
Based on that, can you answer my question?

It’s not that Frances doesn’t think that Asperger’s exists and is a real problem for some people; he does. But he also believes the diagnosis is now radically overused in a way that he and his colleagues never intended. And why, in his view, did Asperger’s explode? Primarily, Frances says, because schools created a strange unintentional incentive.

“In order to get specialized services, often one-to-one education, a child must have a diagnosis of Asperger’s or some other autistic disorder,” he says.

“And so kids who previously might have been considered on the boundary, eccentric, socially shy, but bright and doing well in school would mainstream [into] regular classes,” Frances says. “Now if they get the diagnosis of Asperger’s disorder, [they] get into a special program where they may get $50,000 a year worth of educational services.”

…Aspergerâs is a âfad diagnosis?â Have you actually met any parents who are willing to go through the grueling, soul-crushing process of getting our kids evaluated and diagnosed â not because our children are truly suffering, but because we are greedy for some undeserved taxpayer-financed services? I know I havenât, and I cordially invite Allen Frances to produce those parents before continuing to run off his mouth about them.

If readers would like a different view of “the epidemic”, I have two recommendations:

Steven Novella at Science-Based Medicine on et al.’s new study on autism in South Korea, Autism Prevalence Higher than Thought (by the way, in his blog post, Frances rubbishes this study).

Hold on a minute. Isn’t that a classic moving the goalpost fallacy? Whatever happened to the putative Vaccine-Preventable Disease slogan? If the measles vaccines cause measles infection (actually it is a MUST), how many people have you deceived by proclaiming the measles vaccine will protect them from measles? How could vaccine apologists say the measles vaccines have reduced measles incidence when they are among the leading infection-promoter? I always knew vaccination is a big joke more so the claim that it saves lives.

No, it’s not. The goal of a public health initiative such as vaccinations is (it seems to me, as a layman) the reduction of serious disease and the complications of that disease. Per the CDC site quoted above, the vaccine does cause an infection but does not cause symptoms (for most people) – yet does confirm immunity to the wild virus.

Forgive me, but I am actually going to post an on-topic comment about the Nature articles:

Look at the map on the first link that shows the trouble spots. Zoom in on Europe (click on the pdf version), now find the three major countries that have less than 90% vaccine coverage. Which one is associated with an outbreak in San Diego? Which one is associated with large epidemiological studies? And which one started it all?

Now I want to see a version with the separate areas of France. It has over 90% coverage, but is experiencing a major outbreak. There should be some reports of pockets of low compliance. Well, what do you know, it is actually linked to in the references. Unfortunately it is map of the outbreaks, not of vaccine compliance. It does say:

Of the notified cases in 2010, almost 30% were hospitalised. A higher severity of the disease was observed in infants under one year of age and adults above 20 years, with respective proportions of hospitalised cases of 38% and 46%. In 2011, more than 300 people were hospitalised with acute encephalitis for eight of them. One measles-related death was reported.

Per the CDC web site: “MMR is an attenuated (weakened) live virus vaccine. This means that after injection, the viruses grows (sic) and causes a harmless infection in the vaccinated person with very few, if any, symptoms.”Note that this is a live virus vaccine. It causes an infection according to commonly accepted definitions of the words “live” and “infection”.

Symptomatic or not, it is still a diagnostic case of measles infection and you are proudly promoting the disease.

By contrast, the wild measles strains do typically cause noticeable symptoms and complications in a significant percentage of cases. These strains which are communicated naturally through the air are the ones I colloquially referred to as the full strength version.

Except that a typical measles is benign and uncomplicated but still highly infectious. So calling it “full strength version” is redundant.

@ Chris: Excellent link to the measles outbreaks. I think I have some vaccination history for the measles cases reported in 2010 in France. (Your un-techie buddy went through the back door…for you to link) I “googled”

Vaccine Status French Measles Cases

The second article from the top of the Google search page “Spotlight on Measles 2010…..” has the measles vaccine status, broken down by age for each confirmed measles case
in France. See Figure 4 Bar Chart for breakdowns.

According to the article the vaccine coverage is just about at 90%, not quite the level that is sufficient for herd immunity. And it says:

It had already been predicted in 1998 that countries like France or England and Wales, where vaccine coverage had remained around 80% to 85% for many years with insufficient catch-up programmes, have built up large cohorts of susceptible people, becoming prone to large outbreaks with an increase of the average age of cases [12] .

No, it’s not. The goal of a public health initiative such as vaccinations is (it seems to me, as a layman) the reduction of serious disease and the complications of that disease. Per the CDC site quoted above, the vaccine does cause an infection but does not cause symptoms (for most people) – yet does confirm immunity to the wild virus.

So the CDC neither control the disease nor prevent infection. Instead they promote the disease and spread the infection through vaccination. Great. At least, their goal is still based on science of acquired immunity called infection-induced immunity.

Which gets me back to my original question to you. It’s all about relative risks. We can certainly infer from the current outbreak in France that people who have been vaccinated are much, much less likely to catch the wild-type disease when exposed to it. We also see that a fraction of those people get complications up to and including death.
So – which death rate is worse, the death rate from catching the real, wild, fully symptomatic disease, or the death rate from vaccination? If the death rate from vaccination is lower and it is the most effective way known to prevent the spread of the wild virus, why is that NOT protecting and saving lives?

Hi Chris: Thanks for the linking. I don’t think I misread figure 4 Bar Graph for the immunization status of confirmed cases January-June 2010 in France. The gray bar indicates cases that never received any measles vaccine and those gray bars are huge for all age groups that were diagnosed with measles. The dark blue bars atop of the gray bars indicate cases who only received one of the two doses series.

I’ll try to research some updated data for immunization status for the measles cases in France…I doubt that their public health surveillance system is comparable to the system here in the United States.

We can certainly infer from the current outbreak in France that people who have been vaccinated are much, much less likely to catch the wild-type disease when exposed to it.

It’s because they (the vaccinated) have already acquired primary measles infection before following inoculation. Obviously, their exposure to wild-type MV is no longer their first exposure but instead a secondary exposure. The same reason also explains why primary measles infection from wild-type measles virus would confer immunity from re-infection. So basically, your comparing two different scenarios in a single time frame, which is wrong and misleading. Also your attempt to claim that “the vaccinated are much, much less likely to catch the wild-type disease” is disingenuous because the best immunizing agent against measles infection is the W-T MV itself. But still, I do not promote infection from any source whatsoever.

We also see that a fraction of those people get complications up to and including death.

You would not see that from the unvaccinated and unexposed.

So – which death rate is worse, the death rate from catching the real, wild, fully symptomatic disease, or the death rate from vaccination? If the death rate from vaccination is lower and it is the most effective way known to prevent the spread of the wild virus, why is that NOT protecting and saving lives?

That’s choosing the lesser-of-the-two-evil principle, when it does not apply to naive children. Death rate is irrelevant for someone who does not have the evidence of measles infection. Your goal should be disease prevention not promotion. You’re neither protecting nor saving lives; you’re intentionally putting them at risks of complications including death.

Just be happy for these naive children who were not vaccinated or infected. Their parents must be smart.

@Th1Th2 – I would agree – the best possible case is when nobody is exposed to the disease nor is vaccinated. That way you take no risks. That’s the current situation with smallpox – nobody is exposed to the disease and nobody takes the vaccine. Of course, smallpox eradication was achieved using vaccines.

Don’t worry thingy…we’ve got you figured out so it’s pretty damn obvious those last two paragraghs are yours.

If it’s not the willful ignorance of science and medicine that tips us off, it’s the perseveration on vaccines as infectious agents meme that you’ve got going ad nauseum in just about every post at RI.

“Wrong. The smallpox vaccine did NOT eradicate smallpox. It merely replaced smallpox with vaccinia, which of course is milder. ”

Ok so is there any small pox left in circulation? No you say? Neat, that sounds like eradicated to me. Of course your general inability to use words with their commonly accepted definition roars its head yet again.

I asked you a question on the SBM blog and you ran away and didn’t answer. I wasn’t through playing yet. I asked âCan you clarify why you think the trace amount of formaldehyde in vaccines is harmful?â Since you didn’t answer, I guess we can assume the answer is no, you canât.

Wrong. The smallpox vaccine did NOT eradicate smallpox. It merely replaced smallpox with vaccinia, which of course is milder.

The last known case of smallpox was 1979. Smallpox vaccine is no longer administered to the general public. Vaccinia is not circulating through the population like Smallpox did.
This sounds like eradication. Vaccinia temporarily displaced the smallpox virus from its ecological niche, and when it went extinct (except for samples in certain laboratories) the artificial spread of vaccinia was halted.

Yeah, trolls, measles is just a little outbreak and a mild illness. More than 6000 cases and raising, 20% hospitalization, death in the 1 to 5 %. Nothing to worry about.
I cannot understand how people could take pleasure of taunting other people’s over health issues.

And the clowns I have for a governement don’t do anything about this? Oh, right, they are busy chasing away brown-skinned immigrants or raping maids in 5-star hotels.

Sorry for the rant, but this Saturday I have almost enough of the humanity. I cannot wait for the 21st of October. Hopefully the trolls here will all get raptured, that will give us some vacation.

You know, I always thought that, if the christian foundies are only half-right, I will end up in Hell, along with most of the humanity (if not all).
For my sins, I may be ending sharing my cauldron of boiling oil with one or another of the resident trolls.
The prospect of spending the eternity in the company of Sid, Th1 or Augustine adds a whole new terror to death.

Th1Th2 – are you seriously suggesting that people stopped getting smallpox everywhere in the world because everyone got smarter at avoiding infection and that government sponsored vaccination efforts had nothing to do with it? Do you have evidence for this claim?

Notice that Thingy screws up blockquote tags regularly, but her psychic sense of who’s infected and who’s not, so she can keep her “naive” kids (and presumably her “naive” self) away from them, is infallible. Anybody who gets infected, or strays off the sidewalk “wasn’t smart”. How would they do with the simplest of HTML tags, one wonders?

I asked you a question on the SBM blog and you ran away and didn’t answer. I wasn’t through playing yet. I asked âCan you clarify why you think the trace amount of formaldehyde in vaccines is harmful?â Since you didn’t answer, I guess we can assume the answer is no, you canât.

I thought you already answered your own question.

You said this, didn’t you?

I meant I donât know of any benefits to exogenous formaldehyde;

Don’t tell me you’re also unaware of the effects of exogenous formaldehyde in the environment.

Also, you don’t have any evidence to suggest that the newborn is formaldehyde-deficient before injecting them with formaldehyde, trace amount or not regardless.

And the USG left the sheeple unprotected for ~9 years since they rescinded routine smallpox vaccination in early part of 1970’s. Yup when smallpox was still a global threat.

Smallpox vaccine is no longer administered to the general public. Vaccinia is not circulating through the population like Smallpox did.

Smart move because if the USG didn’t stop it, there will be another epidemic, and that is vaccinia.

This sounds like eradication. Vaccinia temporarily displaced the smallpox virus from its ecological niche, and when it went extinct (except for samples in certain laboratories) the artificial spread of vaccinia was halted.

are you seriously suggesting that people stopped getting smallpox everywhere in the world because everyone got smarter at avoiding infection and that government sponsored vaccination efforts had nothing to do with it? Do you have evidence for this claim?

They got smart enough at avoiding smallpox infection so that the virus doesn’t exist in the wild, but somehow these amazing smarts at avoiding smallpox infection didn’t transfer over to avoiding other forms of infection.

Th1Th2 – are you seriously suggesting that people stopped getting smallpox everywhere in the world because everyone got smarter at avoiding infection and that government sponsored vaccination efforts had nothing to do with it? Do you have evidence for this claim?

Yeah surveillance and containment. Of course, vaccination was the little red cherry on top.

Smallpox was around for about 12,000 years but then cases dropped from 50 million cases a year in the early 1950s to none at all in less than 30 years. People in developing countries got very smart indeed in a remarkably short time, but not smart enough to stop getting measles, polio, malaria and numerous other diseases.

Really, anyone who denies the eradication of smallpox by vaccination must be living on another planet.

Oh, and I am happy for those children who were not vaccinated and not infected. However, I have not seen the evidence to suggest their parents were smarter than other parents. LuckInformed decision plays a part.

I cannot understand how people could take pleasure of taunting other people’s over health issues.

I can’t help but be reminded of an old experiment that was done where the subjects were put into pairs to play a game with a ‘banker’ there as a third party. Each pair had the rules explained to them by which their choices would result in both players getting money from the banker, both players losing money to the banker, or one player getting money while the other lost it. Almost no pair figured out, even though it was right there in the rules, that the course of action which resulted in the highest gain for both players was to cooperate in every round. Once it was suggested to them that they should regard victory in the game as beating the banker, almost everyone got it, but prior to that, everyone seemed to assume that the goal was to beat the other player.

Our trolls seem to assume that the goal of discussing vaccination policies is to verbally ‘beat’ everyone whose views differ from theirs. If your opponent is trying to make a point with an analogy, the ‘winning’ move is not to try to understand the point they’re making with the analogy, but to whine about how their sides uses too many analogies, and claim that their analogy makes no sense. Then, when you don’t have anything really meaningful to say, press your own analogy about how they’re missing a ‘squirrel’ that ran up a ‘tree’, even though the analogy means nothing except that you think you’re right (which they already knew.) When you see a photo of a little girl whose appearance is disfigured by a vaccine-preventable disease, don’t acknowledge that it’s a tragedy; agreeing with anything – no matter how reasonable – is a sign of weakness. Say something like ‘she’s so pretty’ instead because the way you ‘win’ is to always disagree, no matter how reasonable the point is that you’re disagreeing with. Redefine words to favor you, pretend the laws of statistics cease to exist when they don’t favor you, hurl gratuitous insults and abuse, pull out all the stops but at every stage you must oppose, disagree and attack.

And they don’t seem to realize that this isn’t the way that everybody does it. They’re so stuck in the mindset that “discussion” means winning a disagreement that they can’t grasp that reasonable adults view it as a way of figuring out where they can agree. They don’t realize that other people don’t view the possibility of having to say “you have a point” as a terrifying failure that’s worth any amount of frantic scrambling to avert. They might be stuck defending a wrong proposition but by God, they’re never going to suffer through the indignity of ever maturing in their views and correcting their own misperceptions.

Th1Th2 – I don’t understand that particular jibe. You and I agree that if there’s no smallpox, there’s no need for a smallpox vaccine. There was no smallpox in the United States in the 70s, and none anywhere (except in a few labs) in the 80s. Therefore, there was no need for widespread vaccinations in areas where there was minimal chance of being exposed. People are no longer being routinely protected against smallpox, but that’s OK as the disease is extinct in nature.

Now, where is your evidence that smart, informed decision making is preventing the spread of measles to people in France who have not been vaccinated against it?

Th1Th2 – I don’t understand that particular jibe. You and I agree that if there’s no smallpox, there’s no need for a smallpox vaccine. There was no smallpox in the United States in the 70s, and none anywhere (except in a few labs) in the 80s. Therefore, there was no need for widespread vaccinations in areas where there was minimal chance of being exposed. People are no longer being routinely protected against smallpox, but that’s OK as the disease is extinct in nature.

The world was not free of naturally occurring smallpox until 1980 and you stopped vaccinating in 1971. What does that tell you? Where do you derive your immunity from in the absence of smallpox vaccine? What if the CDC states it’s just a plane ride away?

Now, where is your evidence that smart, informed decision making is preventing the spread of measles to people in France who have not been vaccinated against it?

I think nobody wants to have measles which means the vaccinated either were ignorant or uninformed and suffering from false belief.

Does ScienceBlogs (or Orac) get paid on a per click or per post basis somehow? It doesn’t make sense, but I’ve exhausted every other possible reason trying to figure out why TH1TH2 keeps trying, or why anyone else keeps trying back.

Th1Th2 – The vaccinated know that they take a very small risk with a (generally) non-symptomatic infection to prevent a future infection that could (in some cases) have severe symptoms and complications. They know that the risk of catching measles in the absence of general immunization is quite high. They know that a real measles infection can lead to pneumonia, encephalitis, and death. They know that, per the CDC, 1-2 children out of every 1000 who catch measles dies, and others have complications including blindness, deafness, and seizures.

The non-vaccinated traded partial protection from these outcomes in order to avoid a mild infection that in the vast majority of cases causes no symptoms.

It’s not really a question of which germs have infected you – it’s a question of the likely outcomes. Vaccinated you are less likely to have an unfavorable outcome than you would if unvaccinated and exposed. You can’t guarantee the unvaccinated and unexposed outcome as long as you are around other people and the disease is capable of spreading within the population. In the case of measles, you need only look the reported cases in France and the US to know that exposure is possible.

I’m sorry you choose not to understand that.

Unless you have something interesting to say, this will be my last message on the subject.

@ 108 – I think it’s this simple: Th1 Th2 keeps trying because it’s got a serious problem. Those who respond do so because they are good people trying to convey something very important, not only to Thingy but to anyone looking on. They’re educators, medical people, and concerned human beings.

I gotta admit, Thingy’s statements are almost worrisome to me. This is clearly someone in the grip of an obsession, and not a very healthy one.

They know that a real measles infection can lead to pneumonia, encephalitis, and death. They know that, per the CDC, 1-2 children out of every 1000 who catch measles dies, and others have complications including blindness, deafness, and seizures.

The vaccinated didn’t know that a real measles infection is generally benign, self-limiting and uncomplicated. They also didn’t know that vaccine-induced measles can cause pneumonia, encephalitis and death. Now, if I am being offered with 2 competing products with known serious defects, I wouldn’t buy any of them. And besides, what’s their use?

The non-vaccinated traded partial protection from these outcomes in order to avoid a mild infection that in the vast majority of cases causes no symptoms.

Trading are for those who gamble.

It’s not really a question of which germs have infected you – it’s a question of the likely outcomes.

Persistency and latency are for those who harbor the virus.

Vaccinated you are less likely to have an unfavorable outcome than you would if unvaccinated and exposed.

You can’t guarantee the unvaccinated and unexposed outcome as long as you are around other people and the disease is capable of spreading within the population. In the case of measles, you need only look the reported cases in France and the US to know that exposure is possible.

The vaccinated didn’t know that a real measles infection is generally benign, self-limiting and uncomplicated. They also didn’t know that vaccine-induced measles can cause pneumonia, encephalitis and death

Looks like I was wrong. Thingy apparently thinks that jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge is harmless, while jumping off the low board into a swimming pool would kill you.

I asked âCan you clarify why you think the trace amount of formaldehyde in vaccines is harmful?â

You did not answer my question.

I said I donât know of any benefits to exogenous formaldehyde, but I do know of benefits from vaccines containing trace amounts of formaldehyde. I don’t know of any harm from trace amounts of exogenous formaldehyde. I understand that trace amounts of many things can be ingested without either benefit OR harm. They can be excreted without having any effect on the body. Do you accept that? Do you know of any harm from those trace amounts?

Please concentrate. Absence of benefits does not necessarily indicate harm. I am asking you if you think those trace amounts are harmful and if so why. Do you have any evidence of harm, or are you speaking from your intuition only.

Please concentrate. Please try to directly answer the specific question I asked you. I am trying hard to understand exactly what you mean, but you are not being clear and specific enough for me to comprehend you.

I’ll even help you by getting you started. Just complete the sentence “I, Th1Th2, think the trace amount of formaldehyde in vaccines is harmful for the following reasons:……”

Of course, they should be concerned for the 783,936 deaths they cause every year.

Ah, that dumb figure again. It can’t possibly be true: 783,936 people did not have cause of death listed as “modern medical theory and practice” in any year, ever.
There isn’t a source for it (though Gary Null’s ass has been suggested as its origin) and its continuing repoetition by id1id2 just shows how ridiculous her “arguments” are – based on lies, constantly rebutted, but repeated again and again, she is delusional, paranoid, boring and just plain wrong.

It’s a bit too early to be sure, but this year’s epidemic seems to have peaked in March (about 3500 cases). Rather annoyingly, they don’t give the total number of cases for 2011, but there have been 12 cases of “neurological complications” (which I assume means encephalitis), 360 cases of pneumonia, and 6 deaths in 2011.

The most affected age group is children under one year-old, and most cases are in the south-east. The youngest children to get infected obviously had not been vaccinated yet, but the relatively high numbers of children/young adults (11-25 yrs) getting infected is surprising. That is, until you read this report

which is a study of vaccine coverage in children of different ages for the years 2000-2006. Although vaccine coverage has consistently been greater than 90% for 1 dose of vaccine, the figures for 2-doses are much lower (24-74%, depending on the year, and age group studied). I have not been able to find a region-by-region breakdown for vaccine coverage, so I can’t say whether the worst affected regions in the current measles epidemic are those that had the lowest vaccine uptake, but it seems clear that there is a large population of adolescents/young adults who have only ever had one MMR shot. It is not so surprising that those people may be susceptible to the disease as they get older, and their immune responses to the single shot of vaccine they received wane over time.

I guess the practical advice that comes out of all this is check your vaccination record, and that of your kids. If it turns out that you/they only got one shot, you should get a booster.

Th1Th2 keeps quoting that nonsensical 783,936 figure, which was cobbled together by Gary Null and some other naturopaths by trawling through the medical literature looking for anything that could possibly be described as iatrogenic deaths (including bed sores, infections and malnutrition), mostly estimates extrapolated to the whole population of the US, and adding all the numbers together. Harriet Hall wrote about it here. As Dr. Hall wrote, “The biggest cause of death is not medicine, but a failure to use medicine.”

The vaccinated didn’t know that a real measles infection is generally benign, self-limiting and uncomplicated. They also didn’t know that vaccine-induced measles can cause pneumonia, encephalitis and death. Now, if I am being offered with 2 competing products with known serious defects, I wouldn’t buy any of them. And besides, what’s their use?

Can’t someone kill this clown?

Yeah. 1 per million harmful complication from the MMR vaccine, up to 5 death per 100 cases of measles. And you just “buy” a real case of measles like you buy the vaccine; no matter that in the real world, contagious illnesses drop on you without considering if you want them or not. Between 10 and 20 people are typically contaminated by someone having the real measles before the sick person becomes aware of its state. There is a strong correlation between unvaccinated populations (some of the regions in my country are under 50%) and number of measles case, but vaccination is “useless” and as dangerous as the real thing.

The unfolding of the measles outbreak in the first four months of this year included 13 cases of serious neurological complications and two deaths from pneumonia.

I have dead and disabled people in my country, whose misery could have been avoided. Ten years ago, we barely had 50 measles cases reported per year, now it’s in the 5000 range and Swisszerland and Germany are worried that our outbreak is going to outpour on their territory.

What sort of degenerate are you?
Show me a source that the vaccine is doing even one tenth of such harm.
Or if you prefer, I challenge you. Go get your bathsuit. You jump off the Golden Gate, I jump in the local swimming pool.

The vaccinated didn’t know that a real measles infection is generally benign, self-limiting and uncomplicated.

Tell me, troll, did you have the measles?
I did, because back in the 1980’s Germany it wasn’t thought necessary to vaccinate kids against such a harmless disease.
Oh, yes, I was one of those standard uncomplicated cases.
I also was hiding in a cupboard for a fortnight.
That’s what I call benign

The vaccinated didn’t know that a real measles infection is generally benign, self-limiting and uncomplicated, but in as many as one case per thousand it causes death, and in as many as one case per thousand it causes encephalitis not resulting in death, and in five percent of cases it is complicated by pneumonia. Â They also didn’t know that vaccine-induced attenuated measles can in very rare cases, far less than measles itself, cause pneumonia, encephalitis and death, although in general it does not even cause symptoms, unlike wild-type measles.

FTFY.Â

For the benefit of lurkers: if the measles vaccine were far more dangerous — or even just as dangerous — as measles itself, why would parents who had experienced measles themselves vaccinate their children? Â Why would doctors ensure that their own children were vaccinated against it? (My father is a doctor. He made sure we were vaccinated against every disease we were likely to encounter in the United States for which there was a vaccine). Â

For the benefit of lurkers: if the measles vaccine were far more dangerous — or even just as dangerous — as measles itself, why would parents who had experienced measles themselves vaccinate their children?

This brings up my personal anecdote: I had measles as a very young child, from what I recall it would have been in the spring of 1963. I wasn’t quite two years old, but I was so deathly sick that I can clearly remember to this day lying on the couch in total misery. (I don’t know if the vaccine was not available yet at that time; I also clearly remember getting my shots and that yummy sweet polio vaccine when I was getting ready to start school. My grandmother, who’d had a baby die in utero when the only option for antibiotics was sulpha, and lucky to have that, was a big believer in SBM, and I got my vaccines and proper medical care when I caught something like strep.) I also had a hideous case of chicken pox at 15. At any rate, when I had my child in 1992, it never would have occurred to me not to get him every vaccine available, to prevent him suffering like that. He had all his shots, right on schedule. Guess what? No autism, bright, and healthy as a horse. He hardly knows what it is to be sick, really sick, except for a couple of strep throat infections. And to think, this was when vaccines still contained (gasp!) mercury!

“Trace” amounts, moron.
Formaldehyde is present in all living organisms. The word “trace” here means tiny and harmless.
783,936 – the figure you revere is made up. Why do you base all your “arguments” on falsehoods?
You laughably seem to divide all deaths (and all of us will die, right?) into “natural” and “caused by medicine”. This is nonsense; nearly all deaths are in spite of medicine, not because of it.
There is no part of any of your obsessive wittering which is not false, stupid, or misinformed. Or am I being unfair? Have you ever actually written anything here which is true, intelligent, or well-informed?
I wonder if any of the other posters could point out any such example……

Also, I’d like to assure Thingy that my son never, ever stayed on the sidewalk. He played happily in the backyard, like any normal, healthy child, and slept with a scruffy, indoor-outdoor cat every night. I guess it’s a miracle all that vaccine and dirt didn’t kill him.

My friend’s friend whose sister’s going out with someone very high up in the government [what does the sister’s significant other have to do with this?], has a tot who’s completely unvaccinated. “No autism, bright, and healthy as a horse” and never been sick.

Herd immunity works really well, doesn’t it? Until it breaks down, of course, and then you have to rely on your own immunity.

1. There is sufficient evidence in humans for the carcinogenicity of formaldehyde.

2. There is sufficient evidence in experimental animals for the carcinogenicity of formaldehyde.

3. There is strong but not sufficient evidence for a causal association between leukaemia and occupational exposure to formaldehyde.

As well as being intentionally obtuse, suspected to have tangential thinking, shown to have changed definitions of words in order to support her own arguments, and to be lacking in knowledge of immunology, Th1Th2 is now shown to be completely ignorant of dose/response relationships.

Plus she apparently has all of her air filtered so she never breathes any of the formaldehyde in smog, and is on dialysis at all times to remove all the formaldehyde her own body produces, either of which would swamp by many orders of magnitude the amount you could possibly get from vaccines. Who says innumeracy isn’t a life-threatening illness?

Yeah. 1 per million harmful complication from the MMR vaccine, up to 5 death per 100 cases of measles. And you just “buy” a real case of measles like you buy the vaccine; no matter that in the real world, contagious illnesses drop on you without considering if you want them or not.

Compared to 0 complication and 0 death for NOT “buying” a defective product. Have some due diligence man, due diligence.

Can’t someone kill this clown?

You’re expecting dogs with their tail wagging out of submission to kill a clown? I don’t think so. Some of them I have not seen for quite sometime since they went back to their master.

Or if you prefer, I challenge you. Go get your bathsuit. You jump off the Golden Gate, I jump in the local swimming pool.

Since antivaxxers seem to only understand anecdotes, my brother showed signs if autism before he was vaccinated. Three month olds that avoids eye contact and can spend hours staring at spinning objects aren’t typical, and were simply never made that way. Twelve month olds should do more than line up and stack toys and handflap joyously at their accomplishments. And yes, my mom did not vaccinate him until it was completely obvious that he was autistic with or without the vaccines- my vaccinated on time brother is typically developing and somehow lucked out in being my only immediate family member without asthma. Go figure.

Measles is scary. 1 in 1000 doesn’t sound horrible until you end up being assigned the role of 1. 1 in 20 chance of pneumonia, and we’re hospitalizing, what, like one third of cases? Not as scary as smallpox or polio, but really, a one in one thousand chance of death isn’t something to sneeze at. Reminder H1N1? I got it days before the vaccine arrived in my county. The following two months I spent fighting secondary infections, and I lost my singing voice for nine months. And that was a mild case- I didn’t have to be hospitalized.

As for personal liberties, the government doesn’t allow me to sell small children to gypsies or hire them out as slave labor. Pity.

My friend’s friend whose sister’s going out with someone very high up in the government, has a tot who’s completely unvaccinated. “No autism, bright, and healthy as a horse” and never been sick.

a)Your “friend’s friend” is risking her toddler’s life, or at least health.

b)Very high up in the government, eh? And there was us thinking you were a friendless, one-note, lackwit with no connection to high office. Well, that’s egg on our face at least 25% of the time!
c)”up to 5 deaths per 100 cases of measles” – vs – “Compared to 0 complication and 0 death for NOT “buying” a defective product” What part of “vaccine preventable disaeses make kids sick and sometimes kill them” is so impossibly difficult for you to understand?

Anyway, enough troll feeding from me. You’re a useless fuckwit, id1id2, and I’m beginning to feel that your voluntary demonstration of idiocy is making me a little like the Gerogian citizens of London paying a visit to the lunatics in Bedlam – amusing at first, but ultimately tasteless.
ed

If human beings could just avoid contagious diseases by exercising due diligence, there would *be* no contagious diseases, as no one would elect to host them. In particular, no one, ever, would have chosen to catch smallpox, and it would have gone extinct back when the Egyptians were building pyramids. Yet it continued to afflict humanity for millennia. We can therefore conclude logically that human beings cannot just avoid contagious diseases by exercising due diligence.

He had all his shots, right on schedule. Guess what? No autism, bright, and healthy as a horse. He hardly knows what it is to be sick, really sick, except for a couple of strep throat infections.

My friend’s friend whose sister’s going out with someone very high up in the government, has a tot who’s completely unvaccinated. “No autism, bright, and healthy as a horse” and never been sick.

But, according to your way of thinking, one of these things is very much not like the other. I would say that yes, it is possible to not vaccinate and have a healthy kid, especially in the times up until now when herd immunity protected the population; however, according to your espoused beliefs, vaccines are horrible, damaging things, and no vaccinated kid could possibly be healthy, especially since he always strayed off the sidewalk.

For my money, of all Thingy’s crazy and scary nonsense, the worst of it is the idea that kids shouldn’t ever play outside, and that no kid would want to get dirty if they could help it. This is seriously insane. It makes me hope that Thingy has no hand in rearing any actual IRL child, and not just because of the medical neglect to which the child would be subjected.

Well, I’m tired (and a little depressed) from the time I’ve wasted on Thingy. In my defense, I’ve been avoiding doing a lot of chores I really should attend to, so I’m done engaging. Besides, the sun is trying to come out.

@Th1Th2
1. There is sufficient evidence in humans for the carcinogenicity of formaldehyde.

2. There is sufficient evidence in experimental animals for the carcinogenicity of formaldehyde.

3. There is strong but not sufficient evidence for a causal association between leukaemia and occupational exposure to formaldehyde.

Actually, Th1Th2, you have still not answered my question. Concentrate really hard and try again. I didn’t ask why you thought formaldehyde was dangerous. I asked why you thought the trace amounts in vaccines were dangerous. That’s a different question. Is there any evidence of cancer or any other human harm from trace amounts like those in vaccine? I don’t think so. Fluoride is a deadly poison when given in large amounts, but in the amounts used in fluoride toothpaste it is not poisonous; in fact it is beneficial in reducing tooth decay. Even water can kill in high enough doses. The poison is in the dose.

Do you think if one single molecule of formaldehyde entered the body from a vaccine it would cause cancer rather than being metabolized and excreted harmlessly? Do you think the formaldehyde naturally produced in our bodies causes cancer?

Trace amounts of formaldehyde can also be found in some foods, such as some types of Italian cheeses, dried foods, and fish, and in many products used every day around the house, such as antiseptics, medicines, cosmetics, dish-washing liquids, fabric softeners, shoe-care agents, carpet cleaners, glues and adhesives, lacquers, paper, plastics, and some types of wood products.

Are you consistent? Do you avoid all such products because you fear they will also cause cancer? Do you avoid drinking water because water intoxication has killed people? If you want to make the distinction between injection and other routes of exposure, what if you required an injected antibiotic to save your life, would you refuse it if it contained trace amounts of formaldehyde? Background radiation is a carcinogen: do you avoid flying in planes or spending time at high altitudes or in brick or stone buildings?

The anti-vaccine activists will be derailed when the first manslaughter case/civil death suit succeeds. This posits Child A, unvaccinated due to parental choice, contracts the disease when travelling internationally. Child B contracts the virus from Child A at a public school or private day care, and dies from a resulting encephalitis complication. Viral DNA shows a clear link from A to B.

The family of B could claim a criminal act, involuntary manslaughter, or a civil case due to deliberately exposing others to risk of death through negligent actions. Both the parents of Child A and the school through which A and B came into contact could be named as guilty parties.

Any such suit which costs a lot to defend, or worse, in which the defendant is found guilty and civil cost would be staggering, creates a new situation. No school, public or private, could risk such a financial disaster through the acceptance of unvaccinated children.

It just hasn’t happened yet. Patience, capitalism, and a tragedy for one family will eventually do it.

Need I remind you that Thingy always invades these blogs, sucks the oxygen out of the discourse and makes it all about Thingy. Thingy is an attention troll and takes particular delights in be obtuse, changing the subject, and arguing over words and phrases. Can we all agree to invoke Rule # 14 Don’t feed the trolls and Rule # 14 b. Especially Thingy.

If you look at Gary Null’s article, that figure includes 106,000 deaths from hospital adverse drug reactions. This number comes from this paper which is based on 107 “real human deaths” out of 46,625 patients, both inpatients and patients admitted due to outpatient ADRs. This fatal ADR percentage is then extrapolated to the 33,125,492 hospital admissions in the US in 1994.

There are a number of potential problems with this data, not least that the majority of this data is from the 60s and 70s, and we have no idea if the patients in these studies were representative of all hospital admissions 3 or 4 decades later.

Null later adds another 199,000 fatal outpatient ADRs to the total, though it looks to me as if the 106,000 deaths estimated by Lazarou would have included these. The references Null gives for this number are a JAMA commentary and a letter to JAMA that cite a figure given in an Australian article that in turn refers to this article. I suppose it’s too much to ask that Null would give primary sources for his data. In the JAMA article some pharmacists were asked to estimate the morbidity and mortality of prescription drugs, and this was then applied to all prescriptions; not even an extrapolation, but an educated guess, really.

I was going to continue analyzing Null’s figures, but it seems a waste of my time so I give up. I thought it might be worth sharing what I uncovered after a little digging with you guys.

I asked why you thought the trace amounts in vaccines were dangerous. That’s a different question.

It’s dangerous because it is an exogenous formaldehyde.

Is there any evidence of cancer or any other human harm from trace amounts like those in vaccine?

Yes, there is evidence to suggest that exogenous formaldehyde is a cancer initiator and promoter at low dose.

Fluoride is a deadly poison when given in large amounts, but in the amounts used in fluoride toothpaste it is not poisonous; in fact it is beneficial in reducing tooth decay.

No one injects fluoride into the body.

Even water can kill in high enough doses.

If you’re suicidal.

The poison is in the dose.

Of the poison.

Do you think if one single molecule of formaldehyde entered the body from a vaccine it would cause cancer rather than being metabolized and excreted harmlessly?

Yes. It can initiate the formation of exogenous formaldehyde-DNA adducts which can contribute to cancer.

Do you think the formaldehyde naturally produced in our bodies causes cancer?

They are naturally occurring not because they are essential but rather products of detoxification that should be eliminated. And yes, endogenous formaldehyde can cause cancer by the formation of endogenous formaldehyde-DNA adducts. In fact, cancer patients produce more formaldehyde than normally produced in the body which is also attributed to cancer pain.

Do you avoid all such products because you fear they will also cause cancer?

If you can avoid known carcinogens then that is not fear but rather exercising due diligence.

Do you avoid drinking water because water intoxication has killed people?

Anybody with a brainstem should avoid drinking contaminated and vitiated water. Again that’s due diligence.

If you want to make the distinction between injection and other routes of exposure, what if you required an injected antibiotic to save your life or cause death, would you refuse it if it contained trace amounts of formaldehyde?

Background radiation is a carcinogen: do you avoid flying in planes or spending time at high altitudes or in brick or stone buildings?

I don’t think they are built essentially to promote cancer unlike vaccines.

@ Krebiozen : he plays fast and loose with numbers, facts, and everything else ! I think that James Laidler said that he got the figures by “chaining”- extrapolating forward from a small study to make estimates . At any rate,the only realistic figure associated with Null is 8-figure gross earnings USD per year ( spoke.com; manta.com)

“Indeed. The “herd” is so dependable they always populate every hospital bed and saturate the ED. Of course, that is a predictable outcome.”

This is word salad.

Don’t be silly.

No, I’m not kidding. Doctors are right when they say, “Thank you. Come again.” following every vaccination. The “herd” are the pillars of every hospital. They can be found in almost every hospital bed, in the ED, ICU, PICU, NICU, OR, SICU, including every doctor clinics. That’s the “herd” you are talking about and the blueprint has been made for the rest of the vaccinated. The “herd” must follow the shepherd and you know where to find them, right?

No, I’m not kidding. Doctors are right when they say, “Thank you. Come again.” following every vaccination. The “herd” are the pillars of every hospital. They can be found in almost every hospital bed, in the ED, ICU, PICU, NICU, OR, SICU, including every doctor clinics. That’s the “herd” you are talking about and the blueprint has been made for the rest of the vaccinated. The “herd” must follow the shepherd and you know where to find them, right?

You seem to be implying that vaccination is a cause, rather than prevention, of illness. Do you have any evidence for this ludicrous assertion?

“Doctors are right when they say, “Thank you. Come again.” following every vaccination.”

Strangely, mine don’t. When I got my pneumonia vaccination, I had to argue for it because I’m below the recommended age, and then they told me I didn’t need to get it again until I’m 65. In fact, I can’t recall any doctor, ever, giving me a shot and saying, “Thank you. Come again.”

I have long suspected that this troll has never actually encountered a doctor; this confirms it. The troll is under the impression that doctors are those people who serve Happy Meals at MacDonalds.

That is equivalent to 83-159 mL of formalin consumed per day if your numbers are true. The fatal dose of formaldehyde in humans is estimated to be about 60-90 mL of formalin.

I believe your number is a double-dead dose. Nevertheless, you don’t need that much to initiate cancer.

Where did formalin come from? Let’s stick with formaldehyde. It is not equivalent to any amount consumed at all, it is the amount that the body detoxifies and excretes every day from endogenous and exogenous sources. An additional large dose (I have seen 12 grams quoted as a lethal dose in humans) can overwhelm those processes, but a tiny dose, like that in a vaccine cannot possibly.

If you read the article I linked to, you will find that only 1-2% of formaldehyde in the body is from exogenous sources, including methanol in fruit and vegetables. The vast majority is from metabolic processes such as O- and N âdemethylation reactions of endogenous molecules that generate formaldehyde. The normal blood formaldehyde concentration is around 2.6 mg/L, so if it causes cancer in tiny concentrations, we are all doomed.

In case anyone else is interested, while reading more about formaldehyde and cancer I came across an article which discusses the endogenous versus exogenous formaldehyde DNA adducts mentioned by Th1Th2. It concludes:
“Now that the relationship is known, we have to seriously question the biological plausibility that inhaled formaldehyde causes leukemia and Hodgkin lymphoma, and start asking much more probing questions about the epidemiology data.” http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/content/120/suppl_1/S130.full

I have tried valiantly to pin down what Th1Th2 is thinking. It appears that his thoughts include:

A single molecule of formaldehyde can cause cancer.
The endogenous formaldehyde that our own bodies produce can cause cancer.
Formaldehyde has no role in the body but is a detoxification product that requires elimination.
Antibiotics cause death rather than saving lives.
Background radiation is not carcinogenic because it is not built to promote cancer.
Water can be vitiated.

I now have a better grasp of what he is thinking, but he has demonstrated once again, even more clearly, that he does not speak the language of science and he is not in the same universe of discourse as the rest of us. His thought processes are truly alien. I give up. Trying to carry on an intelligent discussion with Th1Th2 is like trying to nail jello to the wall.

They only seem inexplicable if you forget that the goal here is not to convince others, nor even to make an intelligible point, but to lash out, over and over again. The point is simply to strike a pose of intellectual and ethical superiority, and then sneer at everyone else. It doesn’t matter if specific claims are batshit crazy, or contradict each other, as long as they attract an audience that Th1Th2 can gratify himself by abusing.

Some people choose to troll, and others have it thrust upon them. The end result is pretty much indistinguishable.

Thingy has the ability to destroy a thread…must be deriving some weird satisfaction. Just “say no” and don’t engage the troll, whenever Thingy posts and you won’t give him/her/it any satisfaction. Let Thingy go back to the the bat cave where he/she/it stores the bat shit.

Sorry, I’m breaking my own moratorium – but I need to ask stupid troll – so, in your own warped mind, what is the “end-game” or reason behind your “pro-disease vaccine conspiracy?”

I mean, seriously, why do YOU believe vaccines are being used to spread “disease?”

Because vaccines are derived from disease-causing microorganisms. Remember, you’re deliberately inoculating uninfected children. You’re intentionally exposing them to the pathogen, to have them acquire the infection. This is the basis behind acquired immunity. Apart from natural infection, vaccination is the alternative. Hence, prevention is NOT the goal of vaccination but rather infection-promotion.

Since actual modern science freaks both of you out, will you accept the words of a guy who lived over half a millenia ago, and though he was one of the first post-medieval Europeans to set medicine on an evidence-based path, he still believed in enough crazy-assed occult crap to make him acceptable for quotation by woomeisters that you two both like?

I speak, of course, of the Swabian German known as Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, aka Paracelsus, whose most famous teaching is as follows:

“All things are poison, and nothing is without poison. The dose alone makes a thing not poison.”

Science blogger says the glass is half empty. And claims empirical evidence to back him/her up. I say it’s half full. Who’s right? Which is true? If more people say it’s half empty does that make it true?(scientific consensus)

Is inferential empiricism the absolute view of the world? Does it account for all truths?

Augustine, do you want some vinaigrette for your word salad? While empiricism cannot be used to determine things of spiritual nature, like issues right or wrong, it is still useful for dealing with the physical world, such as whether a trace amount of formaldehyde in a vaccine is dangerous. If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be using your computer to post on here.

Not that you’re in a position to speak on spiritual matters. Your last two posts are built largely on deliberately misrepresenting other people’s positions.

I want to thank all of you smart and educated folk, you genuine scientists and medical professionals as well as educated laypeople, for taking the time to explain to the trolls exactly why they are wrong. It might not do them any good, but it helps us lurkers immensely.

Seriously: You have no idea how much I’ve learned from all of this. Thanks to the magic of Greasemonkey and Killfile, I can put a particularly long-winded troll into my own personal dungeon and just enjoy your informative and useful replies. It’s because of the efforts of people like you that I’ve learned to use and love PubMed.

I just want to make sure that you all know that your efforts are not in vain. For every occasionally-loquacious lurker like me, there are hundreds who are sitting and nodding as they watch the trolls make themselves look foolish by refusing to argue honestly.

Hey look aristotle try and think about this. Are you honestly suggesting that there’s no difference in the effect on a human between, say, a single molecule of nicotine and the amount of nicotine in 20 years worth of cigarettes?

Bacteria have infectious doses and lethal doses and the values are not “1”, although for a couple of bacteria the infectious dose is thought to be below 10. Why is that? I mean, it’s not like there are mountains of literature supporting the idea.

Also, what the hell does the glass half full / half empty have to do with anything? Those are equivalent statements. What is your equivalent statement to “the poison is in the dose” and where has anyone said that it is wrong?

I realize you’re a crack addled junior high student, but even coming from you this is odd. I mean damn, you might as well take issue with the law of gravitation of Keppler’s laws of planetary motion since they’re not inscribed on index cards left in the Intelligible Realm or something for all the sense you’re currently making.

or taking the time to explain to the trolls exactly why they are wrong.

“Ie., Thank you for taking the time to explain and show me that the glass IS half empty. I feel so much better about myself now. Thank you for all of the indexed literature, reasoning skills, and skepticism that settles this debate and doubt once and for all.

Thank you for belittling and berating anyone who believes otherwise like those silly uneducated anti glass half empty fools. They are dangerous to our way of life and security.If they succeed in getting people to think the glass is half full then more people will be inclined to drink from the already draining resource. Then the ones who really need it will dehydrate. Think of the deaths,misery and hospital costs that will burden society. They must be stopped in our lifetime. For the children’s sake.

I love how you “take down” and debunk all of their “studies” that they think show that the glass is half full. Anyone with a scientific education can clearly see they are poorly done and biased. What fool would think the glass is anything but half empty? It just doesn’t make any sense.

I mean, c’mon. Even the CDC and all major government entities say the glass is half empty. They can’t ALL be wrong. Thank you for being a sane voice in a world of insanity. There is no conspiracy folks. Trust us. Trust the science. Ration the water please. And turn in anyone who you see taking advantage of society by drinking too much from the cup.

I gave up trying to explain stuff to the likes of the despicable augustine, and the empty-headed Th1Th2, and the unbelievably thick prn. Might be prepared to put stuff out again that is related to my area of expertise when I see the need for it arises.

Well, I’ve read the thread, and facepalmed a plenty at Thingy. It’s like he thinks one day, everyone just suddenly, randomly decided it was worthwhile to wear hazard suits that completely and utterly protected them from smallpox, but magically did nothing to prevent infection by all the other well-known diseases.

Are you honestly suggesting that there’s no difference in the effect on a human between, say, a single molecule of nicotine and the amount of nicotine in 20 years worth of cigarettes?

Who smokes a single molecule?
Is it OK for kids to smoke a single cigarette? It’s empirically safe, right? Smoking in moderation is no big deal is it? Not according to JohhnyV’s “truth”. A few packs or a few drags? What’s the difference? It’s not 20 years worth. You know, “scientifically” speaking.

Well keep moving those goal posts augustine. Anyhow, the single molecule vs a lifetime of cigarettes is the point of the dose makes the poison. Which, unsurprisingly, you don’t understand.

If you’re asking if it is ok for kids to smoke a single cigarette then asking if it is empirically safe, you’re asking two different questions. Is it empirically safe? Probably, since if all it took was 1 cigarette for terrible health outcomes, a lot more people would be having cigarette-induced health problems. Unless you don’t understand the concept of the dose makes the poison, in which case, in terms of safety, you’d think 1 cigarette causes cancer.

Now is it ok? That is more than a health question and it is probably not ok but the reason would not be because smoking a single cigarette causes a persons lungs to fall out. And I know this is hard, but do try and not be a dumb pile of shit. When did I say smoking in moderation is no big deal? Unless, of course, a single cigarette is moderation. Which gets us back to the dose makes the poison, which is a concept you are too ignorant to understand. Just to reiterate, since you’re a dishonest shitbag, I’m not saying smoking cigarettes is good for kids. Or adults. Or sheep. Or little grey aliens.

But lets take alcohol as another example, maybe you’ll be more familiar with it. Is there any harm in an adult drinking 1 beer? What about 2? Or 4? Or 18? I’m sure you understand this concept as I assume you shotgun PBRs every time you turn on your computer and comment here.

Oh no, the 783,936 iatrogenic deaths per year courtesy of Modern Medicine won’t freak me out. Maybe when it reaches 7 digits then I’ll have to think about freaking out. But until then, everything is just fine. You know, being safe and effective and within the therapeutic dose.

@augustine
Are you suggesting it is dangerous to inject 0.1 mg of formaldehyde into a human being who has around 3 mg (100 mmol) of formaldehyde constantly circulating in every liter of their blood? If so, why?

“All things are poison, and nothing is without poison. The dose alone makes a thing not poison.”

Wiki–

Diseases were caused by poisons brought here from the stars. But ‘poisons’ were not necessarily something negative, in part because related substances interacted, in part because only the dose determined if a substance was poisonous or not. Evil could expel evil. Therefore, poisons could have beneficial medical effects. Because everything in the universe was interrelated, beneficial medical substances could be found in herbs, minerals and various alchemical combinations hereof. Paracelsus viewed the universe as one coherent organism pervaded by a uniting lifegiving spirit, and this in its entirety, Man included, was ‘God’. His views put him at odds with the Church, for whom there necessarily had to be a difference between the Creator and the created.

A single cigarette is not poisonous. It’s good for you and nutritious. …
Ahhh…toxins… Recommended by doctors worldwide.

If the implication here is that doctors used to recommend cigarettes, then I’m gonna have to ask for a citation.
Preferably actual textbook advice. Obviously there were advertisements with people in white coats claiming to be doctors and recommending cigarettes, but Lucky Strike and Camel advertising should not be confused with reality.

I have in my library a 1889 edition of Hare’s Therapeutics in which cigarettes are mentioned as a possible treatment for asthma. Asthma! Of course, the editor also laments that younger physicians are no longer familiar with the techniques of blood-letting.

I think that it’s fair to say that a number of therapeutic interventions used in the past are not only out-of-date but are positively laughable. And I’m sure that decades from now, people will look back at our current practices with amusement or horror.

I suspect that one thing they will find particularly horrifying is that we let obviously ridiculous (like chiropractic and homeopathy) and unsupported (like naturopathy) therapies persist as long as we have.

First you show me textbook advice where off-labeling is encouraged and preferred.
This is an unexpected pre-condition. Then will you ask for a shrubbery? And a second shrubbery, beside the first shrubbery … only slightly higher, so you get a two-level effect with a path through the middle?

Perhaps you are in denial that this practice ever existed
An easier interpretation is I am asking whether this practice existed.

And I’m sure that decades from now, people will look back at our current practices with amusement or horror.

Like the vaccine practices?

“Oh, no! Anything but those. Those practices will stand the test of time. Everything else will come and go. But not those. Those are not to be questioned. Those are the sacred. If those are to be questioned then everything we know and believe will be lost. We will have to reexamine our belief systems. Absolutely not. That is not permissible. We are right and we know we are right. Our belief system confirms our bias therefore it is correct.”

@ Prometheus: In 1905-6, Collier’s took on patent medicines ( “The Great American Fraud” of S.H.Adams) which eventually led to pure food and drug laws. By the turn of the 21st Century, due to efforts like DSHEA and the never-ceasing creativity of supplement manufacturers, lobbyists, and charlatans, much of the spirit of those regulations has come undone: isn’t it about time for “Chapter 2″? I truly hope that much of what I write about will be looked back upon someday ( in your own happy phrase) ” with amusement or horror”. Cheers to you!

Lawrence, I think I can explain Th1Th2’s position, but this is only really a guess. It appears she believes that the purpose of vaccination is to intentionally give people chronic infections for the sole purpose of insuring that the medical industry would have continuing business. The problem with this idea is that it assumes everyone in medicine is either grossly incompetent or evil, and fails to consider the possibility of whistle-blowers and similar.

Augustine, if you provided actual serious evidence that vaccination caused more harm than good, we would reconsider it. You haven’t.

If I may make an observation, drug laws appear to be there only to generate industry by creating a new crime category and additional harms, and the establishment is in denial about that even though it’s obvious.

Is it any wonder that ordinary people are suspicious and paranoid about certain entities’ motives since the first half of last century?

I don’t agree that vaccines are bad at all, apart from the unfortunate name, I think they are a more important and healthy invention than bread itself.

I’m struggling to find any real evidence of harm caused by cannabis. You are too by the looks of things.

Augustine, what do you mean by strawman? When most people use the phrase “strawman argument” they refer to people arguing against claims that nobody made, such as your argument at #207. Are you implying you think that vaccines do more good than harm? If so, why are you opposed to them?

The ugh troll has somehow managed, after a year or so of blighting this blog, to fail to be able to properly identify what is an actual straw man argument and what is not (cue cut/paste from dictionary and continued comprehension fail in 3… 2… 1…).

The kind of obtuse, deliberate stupidity required to accomplish this feat – and many similar ones besides – is surely beyond the ken of mere mortals.

I’m struggling to find any real evidence of harm caused by cannabis. You are too by the looks of things.

It makes me puke like mad, here you go.
It’s quite off topic, but I doubt we can do real harm here after augie and Thingy, but actually a great number of people have a position on this based on science.
The Youtuber C0ncordance has a great viseo on this where he also lists several studies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnNPm5cG85c

From personal experience, taking any kind of middle-ground in this debate like “It’s neither as dangerous as opponents claim nor as harmless as proponents claim, let’s find a working solution to regulate it” often makes you the punchingball of both sides.
The anti-canabis side paints you a pot-smoking hippie who just wants to enjoy their drug in public (I don’t even smoke and as mentioned before, Canabis makes me puke, so I don’t consume it in other forms either) and for the other side you’re a alcohol/tobacco/big pharma shill.

@Jacob
I have no fucking idea what the doc said about your lungs. Not that it was relevant.
But do you deny that Cannabis has side effects like reduced reaction times, is potentially addictive and so on?

Remember, you’re not talking to somebody who says “oooohh, kid, don’t do drugs”. I don’t have a dog in this fight. I’ve tried it, I noticed that it’s not my recreational drug.
I also see that there are a lot of people who have some high stakes here against legalization, from the alcohol/tabacco industry over the drug barons themselves to the conservatives for exclusively ideological reasons.

But on the other hand it’s not a no-harm magic cure-all soft drink. If I may pick up your alcohol-analogy:
That’s my favourite recreational drug. I favour the more expensive forms such as French wine and Scotish/Irish Whisk(e)y. I am aware of some minor health benefits a small amount of alcohol has, and I am aware of the negative effects and dangers it has. I’m making an informed decission, I accept the consequences, I’m taking the risk.
I fully support restrictions like age-limits and driving bans. If we can conclede from the data that cannabis has no worse effects than alcohol, and if we can establish sensible rules, then let’s treat it just like alcohol.

Quite frankly, I don’t care what the doctor said about your lungs. I do care that you’re rapidly becoming tiresome, so much so that I’m tempted to resurrect an idea for a post that I had about medical marijuana. I was going to call it something along the lines of “Medical marijuana: The new herbalism” in your honor.

The ugh troll has somehow managed, after a year or so of blighting this blog, to fail to be able to properly identify what is an actual straw man argument and what is not

It’s a loaded question for which he would set up a stick man to attack. I’m not arguing on grounds of homogenous public health risk/benefit ratios.
If I answered the question it would not be my argument. It would be one he created for me with built in presumptions.

Besides It’s not even an argument he would hold steady until the end. He couldn’t. Once verifiable disease cases dropped below the level of harm from the vaccine, he would have to change his argument to continue the propaganda campaign.

Augustine, what are those “built-in presumptions”? That human life besides yours carry intrinsic value? And if a vaccine-preventable disease became extinct, then the vaccination program would end. This has actually happened with smallpox, in case you’ve forgotten. Rather inconvenient for you, isn’t it?

“Once verifiable disease cases dropped below the level of harm from the vaccine, he would have to change his argument to continue the propaganda campaign.”

Well … yeah. If the goal were to vaccinate at all costs forever, it would be necessary to change the argument. But since that isn’t the goal, the argument doesn’t change, and vaccination *is* discontinued when the risk of vaccination exceeds the benefit of avoiding disease. Which is why routine smallpox vaccination was discontinued in the U.S. years before the disease was completely eradicated. A point which the other troll thinks is somehow a strike against modern medicine.

Which is why routine smallpox vaccination was discontinued in the U.S. years before the disease was completely eradicated. A point which the other troll thinks is somehow a strike against modern medicine.

Though these diseases are somewhat rare in the US, they still threaten the lives of millions of people throughout the world. The concern is that many other countries continue to experience outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases. Today, more than ever, itâs evident that these diseases are often just a plane ride away.

Immunizations have cut most vaccine-preventable diseases by more than 99 percent, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Yet illnesses that are rare in this country thrive in parts of the world just a plane ride away.

Despite the presence of a global threat, the USG still managed to play Russian roulette by abandoning routine smallpox vaccination for nearly nine years. Indeed, “Luck plays a part.”

Augustine, how did you go through life not knowing that risks and benefits are dynamic, and change with situations? Do you drive down neighborhood street at highway speeds? When wild-type polio was widespread, then it was safer to use the live vaccine. Once it died down, one could switch to the killed vaccine, and then phase it out altogether.

Again, a question of risk-benefit ratio. The risks from the vaccine are far lower than complications from the wild disease. You yourself admitted there were several deaths from measles before the vaccine was developed. How many deaths were caused by the MMR vaccine?

I’d say measles, like the topic of the page, but frankly, I don’t expect honesty from someone who earlier insisted that changing one’s actions based on a change in circumstances, something anything with nervous system will do, was a sign of dishonesty and ignorance. (#225) For anyone who does honestly want to learn, here’s a good source on immunization:http://www.quackwatch.com/03HealthPromotion/immu/immu00.html

Let me clarify further. When you insisted on a “one-size-fits-all” policy, you implied we treat all cases as equal, which would include using vaccines on the immunocompromised. Since we don’t your statement was nonsense. In cases where all known factors are equal, they are treated as equal. This is basic risk management, if you don’t understand this, then you have no right to comment on such things.

I would suggest you refrain from using quackwatch as a legitimate source unless you care for me to use whale.to. as a source for you.

Measles you say? So why did measles mortality greatly decrease before the vaccine was used? Just a hint, in case you haven’t read, I don’t care about measles incidence, except for it’s sequelae of lifetime immunity. If you care to discuss permanent sequelae in terms of absolute evidence then be my guest, but you can omit incidence rate? I don’t care.

Oh, and for anyone who thinks augustine has a legitimate point in #241:http://www.quackwatch.com/03HealthPromotion/immu/immu01.html
Note the graph showing the dramatic decline in the number of cases after the vaccine was licensed, as opposed to the wild variation beforehand. The rapid drop that augustine mentioned was noise, not signal.

Especially since the idiocy he spouts about incidence and deaths has been explained to him multiple times (for some reason he does not understand that hospital care helped keep very sick people alive starting in the early 20th century). You are arguing with a pig whose skull is welded shut.

Folks, the “germ denialism” in this thread comes from Thingy’s end of the conversation even if s/he doesn’t realise it… an obsession with abiogenic “infection” is utterly unlike any version of germ theory since Pasteur. It’s more like Gen. Ripper’s fixation on fluoride in “Dr. Strangelove” than a serious and workable scientific hypothesis.

Simply put; vaccines work. The data shows it, we have a suite of well-tested theories that explain why, and even common experience shows it. Denialists try to explain all that away… but they can’t, without doing elaborate linguistic gavottes worthy of a top-flight choreographer.

And thus I cease to engage with Th1Th2, and decline to engage with augustine. Just keep walking and don’t make eye contact….

(for some reason he does not understand that hospital care helped keep very sick people alive starting in the early 20th century)

Citation??? so we can get an accurate account on just how much lifesaving measles care can be attributed to hospital care. Oh, you don’t have one that qualifies for this unsubstantianted claim? You just assumed it MUST be true and close your mind shut. What kind of skeptic are you? Psuedoskeptic?

What type of medical doctor are you again?

Oh, I forget. You know everything about everything because you traveled around the world in the military.

It is not an objective resource much like scienceblogs isn’t. You’re only fooling yourself if you think it is. It’s so 1980’s.

Quackwatch is like heavy metal hair bands. Science based medicine is like American Idol. They are for entertainment purposes only.Why do you think the authors wear their emotions and opinions on their sleeves? You see that little counter at the bottom? That’s why.

Note the graph showing the dramatic decline in the number of cases after the vaccine was licensed, as opposed to the wild variation beforehand. The rapid drop that augustine mentioned was noise, not signal.

Most children recover uneventfully from the illness, but [I MUST sell my product so I need to put more emphasis on] serious complications can occur, including pneumonia and involvement of the central nervous system, [and if you don’t mind, death, hihihi] (Parks et al., 2001)

Yup that’ s putting the cart before the horse. Reminds me of Sb Doktor who writes down “pneumonia'”, “encephalitis” and “death” in her patient’s assessment and P.E. sheet as clinical symptoms of measles. FUD FTW!

Once again, augustine demonstrated his incompetence in #255, where anger over preventable deaths caused by the spread of misinformation is viewed as a sign of fraud. To this day, I still don’t understand why people think “scientific” means “without emotion”. Also, his source was from 1962, which is far more dated than Quackwatch.

Th1Th2 is just too wrong to comment on. And I mean wrong in the “What did you do to that puppy?” sort of way.

Simply put; vaccines work [by causing an infection]. The data shows it [causes an infection], we have a suite of well-tested theories that explain why [it MUST cause an infection], and even common experience shows it [causes an infection]

Simply put; vaccines work [by causing an infection]. The data shows it [causes an infection], we have a suite of well-tested theories that explain why [it MUST cause an infection], and even common experience shows it [causes an infection]

Also, his source was from 1962, which is far more dated than Quackwatch.

Did they not see measles cases in 1962? What happened to that “you people haven’t seen disease” gambit? In 1962 they were in more of a position to describe the observation of measles.

“This self-limiting infection of short duration, moderate severity, and low fatality has maintained a remarkably
stable biological balance over the centuries.”

And the fear based science bloggers of today who supposedly haven’t seen measles are going around “oh, no the measles. It’s killing everybody left and right. Outbreaks everywhere. Oh, the humanity. Damn those antivaxxers!”

Who would have a better context of measles? A modern day breast cancer specializing blogger or the 1962
CDC scientist?

Thus, in the United States measles is a disease whose importance is not to be measured by total days disability or number of deaths, but rather by human values and by the fact that tools are becoming available which promise effective control and early eradication.

The article in question was from before when the vaccine was developed properly, and the disease itself still killed people, if not at as high a rate as polio or smallpox. What’s interesting is that a one in a thousand death rate for measles is brushed off as trivial by augustine, but a one in a million rate of complications for the vaccine is seen as unforgivable.

“This self-limiting infection of short duration, moderate severity, and low fatality has maintained a remarkably
stable biological balance over the centuries.”

Short duration? An illness that lasts for a week or more is not short duration in my book.

And it’s SO nice of little augie and the Thing to ignore the next parts moderate severity and low fatality.

So an illness of moderate severity is no big deal, augie? Tell me that again if your imaginary children get measles. Just visit some of the areas it’s prevalent and you can learn all about it.

Why should we settle for ANY fatalities from a disease when we can probably eradicate it and then never have to vaccinate for it again IF enough people got vaccinated. Like smallpox, measles requires a human base, so eliminate the ability for it to find a human carrier, and we will eliminate measles. And then we can eliminate THAT vaccine. I don’t understand why people find that so hard to understand.

My brother and I have smallpox scars. Our sister was lucky enough to be born after it was declared eradicated so she does not have one. Why can’t we do the same with measles?

(And yes, I know that isolation of smallpox victims was used in conjunction with mandatory vaccination in many countries in the process of eliminating it. Here in the US, except for some jobs – military, police – vaccines were/are NOT mandatory but isolation was utilized. Too bad we can’t do the same for measles).

“This self-limiting infection of short duration, moderate severity, and low fatality has maintained a remarkably
stable biological balance over the centuries.”

Short duration? An illness that lasts for a week or more is not short duration in my book.

And it’s SO nice of little augie and the Thing to ignore the next parts moderate severity and low fatality.

So an illness of moderate severity is no big deal, augie? Tell me that again if your imaginary children get measles. Just visit some of the areas it’s prevalent and you can learn all about it.

Why should we settle for ANY fatalities from a disease when we can probably eradicate it and then never have to vaccinate for it again IF enough people got vaccinated. Like smallpox, measles requires a human base, so eliminate the ability for it to find a human carrier, and we will eliminate measles. And then we can eliminate THAT vaccine. I don’t understand why people find that so hard to understand.

My brother and I have smallpox scars. Our sister was lucky enough to be born after it was declared eradicated so she does not have one. Why can’t we do the same with measles?

(And yes, I know that isolation of smallpox victims was used in conjunction with mandatory vaccination in many countries in the process of eliminating it. Here in the US, except for some jobs – military, police – vaccines were/are NOT mandatory but isolation was utilized. Too bad we can’t do the same for measles).

Now, if we could accomplish a high worldwide vaccination rate, the fatality rate from measles would be 0%, forever, and we wouldn’t need the measles vaccine ever again.

WHO says you can’t have a dream? (follow the link @252)

Description: In 2001 the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund published a strategic plan for the control of measles in which it was suggested that a meeting of experts should be convened in 2005 to evaluate the possibility of global eradication of measles. Eradication (i.e., the global elimination of the disease) can bring enormous benefits as cases will no longer occur and vaccination and surveillance efforts can be scaled down (and even completely ended). A recent study suggested that if measles were eliminated by 2010, the United States (USA) could save $500 million to $4.5 billion. These savings are less than previously estimated for the United States, partly because of the assumption that measles vaccines will continue to be delivered in response to possible bioterrorism threats (Carabin and Edmunds, 2003).

They always say, “if it makes money, then it makes sense”. It seems though the show MUST go on. Thanks for sharing your dream Todd, nevertheless.

I believe the actual WHO document to which the link in 252 refers is this one (PDF). The pertinent part is:

Measles has been eliminated in the Americas, demonstrating feasibility. The primary rationale to achieve measles elimination is to achieve improved population health, as well as to save the costs that ensue from a preventable disease. However, countries in the Americas also illustrate an economic dilemma. Countries that eliminate measles still incur substantial costs from surveillance and outbreak control following the importation of cases. If all countries were to achieve elimination of measlesâif there were global eradicationâspending on surveillance and outbreak control could stop forever. Measles eradication would not necessarily imply stopping
routine immunization given concerns over bioterrorism, but an end to outbreak control would generate permanent financial savings for future generations. Additional savings could accrue if the second dose of measles vaccine was discontinued after global eradication of measles. The
economic question is which strategies for measles control can save the most lives and money over the next decades.

So it appears that WHO is of the opinion that we could eliminate measles immunization, but that we might not because of the potential of bioterrorism. At the very least, we can probably reduce to only one, rather than two, doses and suspend active surveillance.

Personally, whether routine immunization is suspended completely depends on the policy-makers and how much weight they put on bioterrorism as a possibility. It could end up being similar to smallpox. We have discontinued routine immunization against that, though military personnel still receive those shots, IIRC, and there is question as to whether existing stockpiles of the virus should be kept or destroyed (currently, the decision has been put off until three years from now). I see a similar thing happening with measles in the long run.

But if anti-vaccine activists have their way, we’ll never be rid of it. So really, they’re just shooting themselves in the foot.

What’s interesting is that a one in a thousand death rate for measles is brushed off as trivial by augustine, but a one in a million rate of complications for the vaccine is seen as unforgivable.

That’s the crux of the whole issue. It doesn’t matter one bit what the risks and benefits are. You start from the conclusion that vaccines are bad and work backwards, no matter how absurd the rationalizations are. Justifying that conclusion takes every step in the tap-dancing denialist’s repertoire.

What produces this conclusion is a mystery to me. In Thingy’s case I suspect that there’s a real fear of needles, along with a belief that disease can be avoided if you’re “smart” enough. I’m at a loss to explain Augustine, except for the possibility of a juvenile “you’re not the boss of me” attitude and some general ignorance.

What’s interesting is that a one in a thousand death rate for measles is brushed off as trivial by augustine, but a one in a million rate of complications for the vaccine is seen as unforgivable.

That’s the crux of the whole issue. It doesn’t matter one bit what the risks and benefits are. You start from the conclusion that vaccines are bad and work backwards, no matter how absurd the rationalizations are. Justifying that conclusion takes every step in the tap-dancing denialist’s repertoire.

What produces this conclusion is a mystery to me. In Thingy’s case I suspect that there’s a real fear of needles, along with a belief that disease can be avoided if you’re “smart” enough. I’m at a loss to explain Augustine, except for the possibility of a juvenile “you’re not the boss of me” attitude and some general ignorance.

I think the server hates me today. It hangs then double and triple posts my comments. Let’s see what happens now. (and it would NOT surprise me to find out it’s due to the wonderful version of IE I am working on…6!!!)

Thingy must be of the opinion that smallpox has been renamed to something else, therefore it’s not really eradicated. I’ve heard of other people who are not in touch with reality claiming such things. IIRC, they say the same thing about polio, that it’s been renamed, but cases have not really decreased.

Measles you say? So why did measles mortality greatly decrease before the vaccine was used? Just a hint, in case you haven’t read, I don’t care about measles incidence, except for it’s sequelae of lifetime immunity. If you care to discuss permanent sequelae in terms of absolute evidence then be my guest, but you can omit incidence rate? I don’t care.

What the heck does this have to do with heterogeneity v. homogeneity?

But the discussion did spur a thought. There are basically two ways to reduce the impact of a disease. Treatment, which uses various methods to reduce the severity of the disease; and prevention, which reduces the incidence of the disease. The effectiveness of these two approaches can be independently measured. Case-mortality rates (or case-severe morbidity rates) measure treatment, while morbidity rates measure prevention. The two measures multiply to determine the mortality rate (deaths per case times cases per population equals deaths per population).

The paper augustine referenced shows that morbidity was roughly constant prior to the introduction of vaccines and that the case-mortality had declined but had leveled off. This indicates that improvements to treatment, but not prevention, prevailed in the pre-vaccine era, as would be expected. A number of us have cited in other threads papers from the vaccination era. After the introduction of vaccines, the morbidity declined and the case-mortality remained roughly constant (and the same as in augustine’s reference). This indicates improvements to prevention, but not treatment, prevailed in the vaccination era, again, as would be expected.

Which raises the question: Which is more effective? That is, if you could only choose one, which one would save more lives? Because there is a sharp delineation between the two approaches, we have the data to quantify this.

We have three points of interest. 1) the mortality rate before treatment(19th century), 2) the mortality rate after treatment stopped improving (1955-1962), and 3) the mortality rate after prevention was added to treatment (1994-present).

So the numbers. From augustine’s study:

1) 100 deaths per million
2) 3 deaths per million

for the final point, consider that there is less than one measles death per year in a population of 300 million, giving us approximately

Ah, I get it. Thingy seems to be laboring under the impression that “eradication” refers to absolute, complete and total elimination of every single last bit of virus from the planet, when the rest of us take it in its intended context: eradication from the wild. In other words, when we talk about eradication, we mean that the disease no longer circulates in the wild. There is no longer transmission from one person (or other animal) to another.

As I said before, Thingy, yes, samples of the virus still exist in labs. But smallpox has been eradicated from wild circulation thanks to vaccines. There is no more transmission of smallpox from one person to another. The same could happen with measles (and polio, too, for that matter) if not for the efforts of anti-vaccine activists.

Thingy, I recommend reading up on the history of smallpox and the role vaccines played in ensuring that no one was ever naturally infected by it again.

That is to say, vaccination is at least 30 times better at reducing death from measles than all other factors combined.

It also has the slight benefit of people not being sick.
Sorry, I’m a bit sarcastic here.
It always amazes me how people can talk about “let the child be sick, it won’t kill them”.
They must:
-not have kids themselves
-have forgotten how it feels to be a sick kid
-be total asshole who love to let children suffer for the sake of their ideology.

For augie and Thingy, I recommend getting the measles. If it doesn’t kill them it might change their mind.
My brother in law (who’s not an anti-vax lunatic) always thought that “well, you really don’t need to vax boys against rubella” until he caught it himself. Now he’s very much in favour of doing so and wished he’d gotten his shot (boys weren’t vaccinated against rubella here back then)

Ah, I get it. Thingy seems to be laboring under the impression that “eradication” refers to absolute, complete and total elimination of every single last bit of virus from the planet, when the rest of us take it in its intended context: eradication from the wild. In other words, when we talk about eradication, we mean that the disease no longer circulates in the wild. There is no longer transmission from one person (or other animal) to another.

For as long as you continue inoculating and transmitting infectious live measles virus to uninfected children, measles virus will continue to exist. Listen.

We do not yet have an agreed, definitive definition for measles eradication, but a reasonable definition may be:âInterruption of measles virus transmission globally for a period greater than or equal to 36 months, in the presence of highâquality surveillanceâ (modified from current Global and Regional definitions of Regional elimination).”According to this definition, measles virus will continue to exist, as virus stocks and infectious materials held in laboratories. Live virus may also continue to exist in persistently and chronically infected individuals. What risk do these viruses and materials pose in a postâeradication world?
For the purposes of this analysis potential risks have been divided into two categories:
â¢ ânaturalâ â associated with circulation of wildâtype virus, virus persistence, and immunization activities; and
â¢ âlaboratoryâ â associated with laboratory work, storage and intentional release.

Link to follow.

As I said before, Thingy, yes, samples of the virus still exist in labs. But smallpox has been eradicated from wild circulation thanks to vaccines.

You stopped vaccinating before it was eradicated LOL.

There is no more transmission of smallpox from one person to another.

Because the variola virus they kept in stockpiles was never been used in the vaccine LOL.

The same could happen with measles (and polio, too, for that matter) if not for the efforts of anti-vaccine activists.

It’s too late for polio. There’s already a new kid in town called VDPV. Next will be a novel mutant vaccine-type measles virus.

Coming soon.

Like I said, if it makes money, it makes sense.

Thingy, I recommend reading up on the history of smallpox and the role vaccines played in ensuring that no one was ever naturally infected by it again.

Great. So tell me the role played by routine smallpox vaccination between 1971 and before the smallpox was “eradicated” in 1980.

Cool. Next. Tell me what happened to the incidence of atypical measles when killed vaccines were taken off the market in 1968?

Science Based Medicine Bloggers have an insatiable appetite to just be right ALL of the time. They can’t help themselves. It’s a character fault. They HAVE to set people straight. It’s in their DNA. They are the quintessential KNOW-IT-ALLS.

Science Based Medicine Bloggers have an insatiable appetite to just be right ALL of the time. They can’t help themselves. It’s a character fault. They HAVE to set people straight. It’s in their DNA. They are the quintessential KNOW-IT-ALLS.

And we see, once again, that Augie cares so much about making sure he gets his cheap shots in, he doesn’t care whether they have the slightest connection to reality. Paul Offit had no connection with the Rotashield vaccine.

Wasn’t Dr Offit on the committee that approved Rotashield? Or was it that he recused himself when Rotashield was removed because he was working on his vaccine at the time? Too tired and too much headache to look it up, sorry.

So he is a tiny bit right that Dr Offit had a connection of some sort with Rotashield. Just not the connection that little augie is implying. But we all know that all those vaccines with long, big names are confusing anyway, so cut him some slack. His brain is exploding.

“The morbidity figures testify to the stability of the biological balance of measles during the period. The decline in mortality demonstrates the degree to which we have adapted to this balance and have learned to live with this parasite.”

@ triskelethecat: Information about the licensing of RotaShield, the investigation conducted by the CDC and the removal of the vaccine is available at:

CDC:VPD-VAC/Rotavirus/RotaShield

No conspiracy at all. The ACIP recommended the vaccine August, 1998 along with recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American Academy of Family Practitioners (AAFP).

The CDC did a thorough investigation of reports of increased risks associated with the first of the three shot series of RotaShield for intussusception; The CDC then removed the vaccine from the “Recommended Childhood Vaccine” list October, 1999. Anyone with half a brain can read the history of the vaccine, investigation and removal by the CDC and know that the CDC acted appropriately, promptly and openly.

Why does one person die from measles and another gets lifelong immunity? What are the characteristics of these two?

Hey, back on topic! The short answer is:

We don’t know. We can’t know, without omniscience.

There don’t seem to be any characteristics that determine this, aside from things like age or “treatment” effects. Looking for heterogeneity can only take you so far. At some point, you have to conditionally assume homogeneity, or succumb to the Nirvana fallacy (in which nothing happens because less than perfect solutions are discarded simply because they aren’t perfect).

The correct method is to take advantage of heterogeneities that can be demonstrated, and treat the rest as homogenous until it can be demonstrated otherwise. And then modify your approach based on the new data or circumstances.

Thus, treatment reduces deaths roughly 33-fold,

How about some citations with evidence to back up your math.

Didn’t you pay attention to your own citation? As I said, I got the numbers right from the paper you cited.

“The morbidity figures testify to the stability of the biological balance of measles during the period. The decline in mortality demonstrates the degree to which we have adapted to this balance and have learned to live with this parasite.”

Precisely. Which is why I said the following:

The paper augustine referenced shows that morbidity was roughly constant prior to the introduction of vaccines and that the case-mortality had declined but had leveled off. This indicates that improvements to treatment, but not prevention, prevailed in the pre-vaccine era, as would be expected.

Which leads me to wonder why, if augie is so familiar with the paper I cited for my numbers, he is demanding that I provide a citation?

“…if augie is so familiar with the paper I cited for my numbers, he is demanding that I provide a citation?”

I suspect that is because “autustine” only read the abstract and not the entire paper. This is a common problem among “iconoclastic” science amateurs like “augie” – they read something in the abstract that seems to support their point but don’t bother to read the entire paper. Or, if they read the paper, they can’t understand it.

I’ve stopped bothering with “augie” – he’s clearly just commenting in order to “score points”. If you said that the Earth orbited the Sun, he’d probably give arguments about why that was evidence that science is too hide-bound and dogmatic. He’s not here to learn, discuss or debate; he just wants an argument.

I’m the mother of a four year old boy with autism. I had to say, just in case there are some fence sitters reading, I took him to the doctor yesterday (June 3rd) to get his 4 year old vaccinations. He got four jabs; MMR/Polio, chicken pox, DTaP and PCV 13. He has the normal reactions that are to be expected, tenderness in the injection sight, one of them was itching him actually, a slight fever which was alleviated with ibuprofen. But he wasn’t even cranky or lethargic yesterday afternoon after his appointment when we spent several hours on the bus and walking around to run errands that I had to do and we spent a lot of time at the pet store looking at fish (his latest obsession) and then went to his end of pre school picnic. We got home about 8:30 PM and he had been so happy and full of energy the entire time and no meltdowns today, just as cheerful as I could hope for.

See, his autism developed regressively, the same age as these children whose parents are claiming vaccine injury, but my son didn’t get the vaccines they claim cause autism (due to financial constraints at the time) until well after his symptoms were documented. He’s current now thank goodness, and had I been able to get his vaccines on schedule I would have. But vaccines didn’t give him autism. It’s something he had since birth, possibly even conception.

Looking back now that I know what it is he has, I can see certain telling characteristics in him from birth. He didn’t like to be cuddled too much, would scream for hours sometimes for no apparent reason which was written off as colic, always had trouble sleeping until we put him in his own room and he still sometimes does. Just a lot of things I see now that were present, but didn’t recognize as anything more then him being a particularly challenging baby. He was my 6th and I had said to my partner from day one, I’ve never had a child act like this. He assured me that his other two had so I didn’t pursue it. Now that I know it was autism all along, I wish I had pursued it. Perhaps earlier intervention would allow him to communicate with me now.

Anyway, my point is, yes, my son has autism, but there’s no way that vaccines caused it because he didn’t get them. I was 36 when he was born and believe it’s possible I was just too old to have a neurotypical child. Since his autism developed the same way the parents of the ‘vaccine injured’ children’s autism developed, I can’t see how that can be the case for them either. Studies show 20 – 40 percent of children with autism show developmental regression but more then 20 to 40 percent of children with autism receive vaccines, therefore the vaccines are not causing the regression, it’s just something that sometimes happens in children with autism.

One thing I am very grateful for is I don’t have to worry about my son getting the diseases he’s been immunized against. He’s safe from them and from death by them. What concerns me is correcting his behavior and helping him to grow and develop as much as he can. There is no cure for autism. Anyone who tells you their child has been cured of autism never had a child with autism to begin with. There’s also no cure for these diseases we are being vaccinated against. If we become infected, there is treatment, but we kind of have to just let it run it’s course and hope it doesn’t cause permanent damage or death. Autism can be treated and many people with autism can live fulfilling lives. I don’t know if that will happen with my son, I don’t know how severely effected he is, but I do know that whining and complaining that vaccines are to blame doesn’t help him at all and rather then focus my energy on a pointless endeavor, I choose to look toward his future and make the most of what we have.

What do I have? A little boy who is too cute for words, loves animals, airplanes, helicopters and trains, dinosaurs and refers to any skull or skeleton he sees as punkin keen (pumpkin king from Nightmare before Christmas). He sniffs my nose to show he loves me and loves Lilo and Stitch even though it’s starting to wear on my nerves. He’s funny and fun and gives the best squeezes around. He sometimes has trouble in large crowds, with loud noises and bright nights. If I move his line or circle or group of cars he becomes distraught. He can’t eat potatoes unless they are French fries or chips and doesn’t like bananas unless they are green. He rocks really hard for about three hours cumulative each day in one of our recliners and stims on his hands and fingers and walks on his toes. He gets distracted easily and I have to remind him constantly what he is supposed to be doing to keep him on task. He can’t lie to me, he can’t manipulate me into giving him what he wants. He doesn’t always understand why he can’t have what he wants at the time, but he is getting used to the idea that there are rules and those rules must be obeyed. With the gentle guidance toward following those rules and with consistency, meltdowns for not getting his way have dramatically decreased. So even though he’s only 4 and we haven’t officially started his intensive therapies yet (he’s been involved in Early Intervention since he was 2 and a 1/2) he is making progress and I look forward to the progress he can make once we do begin his therapies.

Autism isn’t as bad as many people make it out to be. It is a challenge and a constant exercise in patience for me. But my son is amazing and he wouldn’t be the same little boy if he didn’t have autism.

@ Venna: Wow, you are an extraordinary woman. Thank you for sharing your son’s story with us.

I suspect that many parents of children diagnosed with autism and who also say that their child was “normal” before receiving immunizations, do in fact know that there were very early signs of the disorder. Unfortunately, rather than deal with the realities of their child’s situation, they indulge in the blame game…with vaccines being responsible for their child’s disability. Still others have opted to attribute their child’s hyperactivity or learning disability to the “trendy” diagnosis of autism.

As you well know there is no “cure” for autism, but there are interventions to help the child which you have employed, such as structure, rules of behavior and one-on-one time with the little one. Some children who have been labeled as “autistic” and are in reality learning delayed or have ADHD, will, with some help, learn in the educational setting. ADHD in particular affects little boys and so many of them are able to channel their behaviors in order for them to be mainstreamed in classrooms.

As parents we feel frustrated because of the activities of the anti-vax “experts” and their negative impact on society and because they encourage new parents to avoid childhood immunizations. We desperately need parents like you to be share their child’s stories and to speak out about preventive health in the form of complete and timely immunizations.

Thank you again for sharing your experiences and please come back to post again.

“But vaccines didn’t give him autism. It’s something he had since birth, possibly even conception.”

Absolutely. Some years ago, there were some weird discussions about the whole issue of (mercury in) vaccines travelling backwards in time to affect development of certain parts of the brain in utero, because there had been some discoveries of certain developmental phenomena that could only happen in utero; the anti-vax lot were still going at meltdown speed agains vaccines because of this, and couldn’t accept that they could be wrong on this! But, yes, there are definitely factors of development in utero that contribute greatly to the overall developmental picture of autism.

“Looking back now that I know what it is he has, I can see certain telling characteristics in him from birth.”

This is something that my mother told me about, when I quizzed her on my own development: I was a psychology undergraduate and looking in my medical records for evidence of being dyslexic, and found a lot more there than would just point to dyslexic difficulties. Now, I was born before MMR was even thought about, ergo my autistic developmental trajectory is not one brought about by MMR vaccine. She noticed pretty much the same things with me that you noticed with yours, and – indeed – when you say “There is no cure for autism”, you are right.

If I’m honest about this, I’m not even sure there is a need for a cure, as such. I say this because – on the basis of all the available evidence – an autistic developmental trajectory comes about because there is a biological variation that occurs in utero and which then interacts with various environmental factors from birth. I don’t mean things like mercury in vaccines or ‘toxins’ in the atmosphere. I mean the ways in which people respond to the child and how the child develops. Autism is developmental, not medical; and so cure is not needed. That is not to say that support for development isn’t needed. Because it most certainly is!

“What do I have? A little boy who is too cute for words, loves animals, airplanes, helicopters and trains, dinosaurs and refers to any skull or skeleton he sees as punkin keen (pumpkin king from Nightmare before Christmas).”

Then you have the whole world! And you know it!

“With the gentle guidance toward following those rules and with consistency, meltdowns for not getting his way have dramatically decreased.”

And here’s what I mean by how the biological variation is is responded to by people in in the child’s environment.

“Autism isn’t as bad as many people make it out to be.”

Speaking as both a psychologist who has specialised in the whole autism issue and as an autistic adult, I thank you for saying that. I think that your statement there underpins the whole ‘how people respond to it’ thing nicely, to tell you the truth. A little example of what I mean:

When I was at school, it was thought that difficulty ‘might be one of retardation’. Then the WPPSI was done, and the IQ turned out to be 119; later on, WISC-R was done and the IQ was 129. Now, you’d think that a high IQ like that would enable a kid to sail through school. It doesn’t. And this is especially so in the case of a kid who isn’t social, and for whom detecting intentionality is very difficult (if not impossible), and for whom understanding other people’s unsaid motives is just … too hard to even contemplate.

So this kid goes through school and it is hell. And he goes to college, and it happens to be hell – for the same reasons that school is: too many non-academic difficulties and not enough support (actually, in my case, no support whatsoever). Eventually, said kid emerges out of the educational sausage-machine with a B. A.-equivalence in psychology and his M. Ed. in Special Education (Psychology), and specialisation in his own area of disability. And he still has problems getting work – because it is automatically assumed that being autistic means that he is a useless burden to society. Even when his M. Ed. was awarded with Distinction.

In other words, what makes for the quality of life of an autistic person is more to do with how that person is responded to and included in his/her community. After that, very little actually matters. As to how far someone can get as an autistic person, one only needs to read Kanner’s 1973 account of his follow-up on the 11 children he reported on in 1943: Patricia Howlin’s book “Autism – Preparing For Adulthood”*.

Unless a person is dead, development is inevitable. And the main arbiter in development is education (in its broadest sense). It’s not just what we teach. It is also how we teach, and why!

After all this, I can only reiterate what lilady, herr doktor bimler and triskelethecat have already said (none of which needs repeating here). Thank you for your post, and for telling your story.

As Shaw says, the difference between a lady and a flower seller isn’t how they behave as much as how they are treated. Parents that are flexible in their expectations will do better in raising a child on the spectrum.

Venna-you sound like me 10 years ago. We are trying to guide my daughter to a career that uses her math ability and love of animals, while getting past her problems with writing and understanding why people do as they do. I hope you can get the schools that support you and your child.

See, his autism developed regressively, the same age as these children whose parents are claiming vaccine injury, but my son didn’t get the vaccines they claim cause autism

What vaccine DID he get? None or just not the MMR? Did he get Hep B?

Too bad, science based medicine believers aren’t allowed to use your anecdote as evidence. Unfortunatley, it proves nothing. It can’t even be used by SBM blogger standards to say that vaccines are not a cause of autism.

If you said the exact opposite you would be treated with contempt and blasted for being a “horrible” person for thinking the wrong way and endangering the developing world.

Instead, it doesn’t matter what you actually say and how you say it, if you are pro mass vaccination you will be accepted by this supposed science group.

One thing I am very grateful for is I don’t have to worry about my son getting the diseases he’s been immunized against. He’s safe from them and from death by them.

Then why do you care about vaccines? Do you understand that people’s children have been devastated by Science based medicine pushed vaccines? Do you understand they weren’t informed of this consequence and of the objective use of facts?

What is your supposed beef with vaccines? Why are you a “anti-anti-vax warrior”? If vaccines have absolutely nothing to do with brain damage or autism then what do you care? If vaccines work you have nothing to worry about. Your son is protected right? You’ve already stated your confidence. You have enough things on your plate to worry about. Your motives for vaccines are peculiar unless you are just passing by with a fleeting anecdote. And if so, you should be aware that SBM bloggers are vicious attackers of anecdotal stories in lieu of science. Especially if you mention “vaccine” and “autism” in your science less story.

I don’t doubt you account. There are many like it. Also, There are many who have observed massive neurological change immediately following vaccines. Your accusations are disrespectful to those mothers and families that your anecdote is proof against vaccine injury.

God augustine, what a hateful little twat you are. A mother shares her story of living with her (definitely non-vaccine damaged)autistic son, about the tribulations and pleasures – yes pleasures – of children with the condition and you rant on about how her story doesn’t count because….oh because you’re a terminally clueless science hater who has nothing else to do but wank all over the threads at RI.
Orac, could you ban this repulsive waste of DNA? It never was of the least value anyway, has never said anything of the remotest interest, and has now attacked a new poster with an interesting story.
And thank you Venna, please post again

“If you said the exact opposite you would be treated with contempt and blasted for being a “horrible” person for thinking the wrong way and endangering the developing world.” (Way more than a little psychological projection there from our resident troll).

Never, ever, have (non-troll) posters here used this blog to minimize the challenges parents face while caring for their disabled children. You, on the hand, have personally attacked me and other posters here who have children with handicapping diagnoses and posters who are on the Autism Spectrum. What a pathetic excuse for a human being you are…to get your jollies by attacking posters on this site.

Augie, the poster actually has real children not the imaginary ones you post about. Her child actually has autism and she actually has knowledge that is based in science.

Crawl back to your cave and how about looking for a JOB, instead of sponging off society.

A mother shares her story of living with her (definitely non-vaccine damaged)autistic son,

What does autism have to do with this entry, “The 2011 measles outbreak and vaccines in Nature”?
Autism has nothing to do with vaccines right? Why does this mother feel the urge to make a post to create doubt about the safety of vaccines? Her post is a passive aggressive insult on parents whose children have been injured by vaccines and/or resulted in autism.

Why is her anecdote met with warm regards when other anecdotes have been visciously attacked and their authenticity questioned? Are anecdotes OK in Science Based Medicine land now? Why the double standard?

Never, ever, have (non-troll) posters here used this blog to minimize the challenges parents face while caring for their disabled children.

Did I in any way minimize the challenge of raising a disabled child? Nice strawman lilady.You should be more careful. I expect it from, spicy under the collar never posted anything scientific, AnthonyK. You are SBM. Represent. What the posters do on here is pummel the observational experiences of parents who have witnessed vaccine injury into psychological oblivion. They attempt to psychologically disable the parent through epistemological battery. “How do you know? Do you really? Do you really, really know? How do you know that? Are you absolutely certain?”

Save your anecdotes. The posters on this board are not interested in autism. They are interested in vaccine compliance. Autism just so happened to perk their ears up a few years ago because it threatened vaccine compliance.

The true challenges of life with children on the spectrum supply red meat to those who capitalise on fear rather than information: being no different from charlatans, who by manipulating emotions, scare consumers off SBM while simultaneously offering “prevention” and “cures” for whatever ails ye… for a fee. Or move debate over to the courtroom. It shuffles off realistic concerns – and solutions- allowing the distraught to steep and bathe in a bitter stew of invective directed at whomsoever advocates science-based ideas. Which accomplishes *nothing*: indeed, aren’t the tactics and ideas of groups -like AoA and the Trans-Atlantic Society for the Preservation of Andy Wakefield- *isolating*, to say the least? Getting parents to conceive of themselves- and their children, first and foremost, as *victims*! Being *so* _different_- sure, there are differences but commonalities as well- which you describe so well.

I don’t have the ref right now but a recent survey of UK adults shows a figure hovering around the 1% mark, giving lie to the oft-quoted reports of the rising autism “epidemic”( sic): I look as this purely as an advertising technique . How many of us, age 30+, went to school with people, or know people, who would be classified ASD if they had been born post-1990? Most of whom had no designated special training and manage to adapt.

Augustine, do you have any evidence for your accusations? Do you have any specific concerns to point out, rather than vague issues? Anything to provide to the world besides an overwhelming level of self-righteousness?

My purpose and reason for sharing has nothing at all to do with whether or not you like it. You can jump off a cliff into a raging river for all I care. My comment was for those who are not sure what to believe, who have been scared into thinking that vaccines aren’t the best option because of the tactless tactics of the anti-vaccine movement. I know die-hards like you won’t be convinced so your antagonistic response is pathetic, weak and rude. This is the same attitude that I get from the anti-vaccine autism community and why I am not welcome there. Since I don’t fall into their line of thinking, my son’s case of autism doesn’t count. It is trivia and he is an oddity. Yet there are MANY more parents of autistic children that don’t believe that autism is caused by vaccines. The anti-vax camp is just louder and more rude about it, NOT the majority.

I grew up in an anti-vaccine family. There were two separate occasions I was removed from school due to a measles outbreak, once in 4th grade and then again in ninth grade, and I had no proof of immunity. When the third outbreak was reported during my junior year of high school, my mom decided it was actually better to go and get us the vaccine (MMR) so we wouldn’t be removed from school again. When nothing devastating happened to me (as I had been told all along that the vaccines were to blame for the illnesses and the outbreaks and by getting them we were putting ourselves in danger) I became confused.

Getting the shot was easy, I didn’t even have any side effects, not even the minor ones they say are most common. Then I started thinking, why weren’t we vaccinated to begin with if the vaccines don’t actually do what my mom told us all along that they did? I was 16 and even then could see the flaw in the ‘logic’ behind her argument, which is the same argument as the current anti-vaccine movement, they just have a new ‘villain’ in autism.

My older brother and sister nearly died of pertussis before I was born (my mother shared this with me after I began having children of my own). I had mumps when I was 6 and pertussis in high school and have ever since had issues with my lungs. Not really asthma, but something similar where I begin coughing uncontrollably if I laugh too much. My younger sister nearly died of spinal meningitis and is now completely deaf in one ear because of that. All these things could have been prevented with vaccines, and yet my mother forced us to suffer through them. And suffer we did. Mumps was excruciating, pertussis was exhausting and all the time I was sick, my mother still sent me to school and to work (in high school) because I didn’t have a fever and I wasn’t throwing up.THAT was the most irresponsible part about the whole thing. How many other people who were not immunized, including newborns, became infected because my mom had me out in the community like nothing was wrong?

I’ve been on both ends on this debate and even though my mother tried to convince me not to immunize my own children when I started having them, I’m glad I went with what I felt was right for them. They were all, with the exception of my youngest, vaccinated on schedule. They are all, again with the exception of my youngest, neurotypical, and they are all, including my youngest protected from contracting and spreading these deadly infection diseases.

Why did I share my story? I believe I said that in the first sentence: for the fence sitters that might be reading. You can’t take a gamble with something like vaccines in the off chance that ‘it might cause autism’ because the diseases that they prevent are FAR worse then autism ever was.

Then I started thinking, why weren’t we vaccinated to begin with if the vaccines don’t actually do what my mom told us

all along that they did? I was 16 and even then could see the flaw in the ‘logic’ behind her argument,

Can you see the flaw in your own logic? “momma say dem vaccines are from da devil” argument doesn’t hold up. “I vaccinated and it didn’t hurt therefore anyone who claims they do is in error because of my logic.”

which is the same argument as the current anti-vaccine movement, they just have a new ‘villain’ in autism.

You paint with a broad brush don’t you?

they are all, including my youngest protected from contracting and spreading these deadly infection diseases.

Should Science Based Medicine fence sitters trust your logic or you anecdote?

Your arguments are simply and purely argumentative, only meant to inflame rather then inform. I suggest you take your opinions and views to a place where you might be listened to and adored for your thoughts. Perhaps Andrew Wakefield needs a roommate. All you are doing here is making yourself look like a fool and an insensitive prat who can’t see past his own nose to possibly find out hey, guess what, there are other people in the world and MOST, as in several million more, don’t believe what you do. Most have the common sense to see what you have to say as scaremongering and absolutely lacking in any scientific base.

Vaccines don’t cause autism. If they did, autism would have experienced a rise in occurrence long before now. How can you ignore the BILLIONS of people who have been vaccinated over the history of vaccines that didn’t get autism? Also, autism has been around much longer then the official diagnosis has been. All throughout history there have been people who were ‘odd’ and may have actually fallen under the autism umbrella, if it had existed. Relatively speaking, autism as an officially recognized disorder or condition, is still new, compared to vaccines. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist before it’s official recognition. How many people were put into asylums for the mentally insane? We don’t have places like that anymore for the most part, but how many of the people who were imprisoned in these places had autism rather then an actual mental disorder?

And don’t forget when autism was first a recognizable condition that could be diagnosed, it was blamed on bad parenting. What parent would want to admit they had a child with autism? That would be admitting to the world they were bad parents. Given how closed minded society used to be, it would have been much more likely that children given an autism diagnosis were simply shut away and not talked about and eventually forgotten rather then allowed to live as normal a life as possible and be exposed to society and society to them. It isn’t that autism is new, it’s that society is finally realizing that autism isn’t as bad is it was first made out to be.

Are you really comparing the flu to measles or polio? These are diseases that maim and kill. If a person lives through it, they may have permanent disabilities. They won’t ever get the disease again though and that is the difference between them and flu. A person can get flu every year, the body can’t build a permanent immunity to it. It can to those other diseases which makes vaccination against them so much more important. Get the antibodies without having to suffer through the disease and possibly die from it and if everyone was conscientious and vaccinated themselves and their children, these diseases would eventually be wiped out like smallpox was.

Try, just try a little bit to open your mind. It really doesn’t hurt, it just takes the ability to realize you don’t know everything and are actually fallible since you are human. Do we know everything there is to know about medicine? No, but we know a lot more then we did 100 years ago, and in 100 years from now we’ll know more then we do today. But what we do know is the best that there is to offer. Ignoring good, solid scientific evidence is ludicrous at best and danger at worst.

Oh please, Orac, I know that you hardly ever ban anyone. Unlike the crank sites you frequently cite, your policy is to allow dissent: quite right too. You assume that your regulars, usually more knowlegeable than me, will chew them up and spit them out, everyone learning in the procss (except the trolls, of course).
But the ever-nasty, always-stupid, augustine troll has surely gone too far. What does he contribute to this blog in any way?
And yeah, I know about “killfile”, and of course “ignore” but this particular nasty piece of shit shouldn’t need a special button so I don’t have to read his pitiful bleats ever again.
Thank god his children are only imaginary.

@ Venna: Welcome aboard. I see you have attracted one of our more stupid, more nasty trolls….wait until Thingy comes aposting…he/she/it is a trip and a half.

I’m even more impressed with your knowledge of immunology and vaccine-preventable diseases, after your last post. It must have been very difficult to reason out the science versus your upbringing in an anti-vax family. We love anecdotal stories from people who have real children, real experiences and live in the real world and are educated in the sciences…as opposed to the trolls’ postings.

I’ve read some of thingy’s (I have to ask why you call ‘it’ that? Just out of curiosity) posts and I have to admit it would be laughable if ‘it’ didn’t actually believe it was contributing to a conversation. All I could do was look at the posts in utter disbelief that someone who be so nonsensical and believe they know what they are talking about.

I’ve reached out to other parents of children with autism in an attempt to find support. Once they find out I don’t tow the vaccine caused autism in my child line, I’m shouted out that I’m a decenter planted by the pharma to confuse people. I’ve been insulted and threatened and all I was looking for was support from other parents who are going through the same thing I am. I learned fairly quickly that there are some places you just can’t go for support unless you buy into their faith and I just can’t do that because I know better. Call me fickle, but I have a logical mind and if something doesn’t make sense to me, even common sense, I can’t buy it.

I tell my story and share my experience because the anti-vax people do the same. I can’t shut them up, I doubt they ever will shut up even if the studies they keep screaming for proved unequivocally they are wrong, but they can’t shut me up either and in order for anyone to make an informed decision, they need to know both sides of the argument. The Internet is teeming with anti-vax propaganda masquerading as truth. I found that out when I tried to research autism online when we got the diagnosis. I’m attempting to add a voice of reason to the sometimes very unreasonable world of autism.

Even if my son didn’t have autism, I would still support vaccinations simply because the science behind it cannot be disputed in any real sense with fact. Feeling and faith have no place in medicine and science. That’s what religions are for.

Venna – thank you for posting up. Unlike what boring troll likes to spew, no one here denigrates the parents of autistic or disabled children – we disagree with the views that link vaccines to autism, because those views aren’t backed up with any real evidence or science.

But, for those parents who have the challenge of children with autism or other disabilities, they do have an up-hill climb and we, as a country, do not dedicate the necessary amount of resources to assist them in making sure their chilren receive the best possible support and therapies available to help them live the best lives possible.

Trying to put the blame on vaccines, after study after study have refuted a link, just distracts the public from real discussions on more realistic links to a cause and definitely does not address the needs of those parents and children to live their daily lives – and it is a major problem.

Vaccines don’t cause autism. If they did, autism would have experienced a rise in occurrence long before now.

Hence the question raised earlier, how many vaccines did your child receive before you realized you’re making a mistake?

Even if my son didn’t have autism, I would still support vaccinations simply because the science behind it cannot be disputed in any real sense with fact.

It’s easy to see you’re in a bargaining stage. Sorry but you can’t turn back time. It’s a tragedy to have an autistic child, not a blessing. Nobody wants to have an autistic child. You should be blamed for everything but you were in denial for a long time. You’re just digging yourself deeper into the hole. Learn from your mistakes. Sorry, but there’s no second chance. Poor kiddo.

Hi Venna: I didn’t make up Thingy’s name, so I cannot take credit for that bit of cleverness. I confess that Thingy’s posting name reminds me of the blood panel (TSH, T3, T4, FTI) to test for hypothyroid and hyperthyroid conditions.

Yes, I felt very alone after I gave birth to my profoundly multiply disabled son 34 years ago. I finally met some parents who had disabled children, when my son was 14 months old and he was provided early intervention services through Family Court at a special school for the physically challenged, medically labile child. There I met parents whose children had cerebral palsy, seizure disorders and degrees of mental retardation. One little girl had Rett Syndrome and we sadly observed her degenerative condition. It was there where I met my good buddy who had that unique spark of advocacy on behalf of her child. She and her family are our closest friends; our boys were raised together, we spelled each other to provide around the clock care during their frequent hospitalizations and six years after my son’s death, I visit our remaining “son” each week in his group home.

Further down the line, I met a group of parent advocates from a large nearby school district who were my mentors. Our kids were all different ages with different developmental disabilities but we shared the common goals of getting programs in place, expanding existing programs, procuring in-home and out-of-home respite care, vocational programs for the older children and neighborhood group homes. We also got involved in local and state politics and testified at hearings conducted by the State’s Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities. We worked “both sides of the aisle” to get key legislators on board as well as columnists and TV reporters in local and national media who were simpatico with our advocacy.

Now I don’t know where you reside, but Autism Speaks, set up in the United States by Mr. and Mrs Wright and funded through their generous endowments, really is an excellent web portal for up-to-date information about science based research and therapies such as ABA that really work for many youngsters. They have a blog, where you can post as well. I checked out their blog and yes, some of the loony anti-vax crowd from Age of Autism have posted…but there are also many posters who are parents of children on the Spectrum who do not ascribe to the bogus theories of vaccines causing autism and miraculous “cures”.

I wonder where “Chris” is…she has a wealth of knowledge about networking amongst parents of disabled kids.

I admit that my immediate response to Venna’s message (#306) was to wonder how the usual trolls would find a way to respond to it with a sneering, completely non-classy display of intellectual bankruptcy. But I admonished myself not always to expect the worst from them.

I’ve read some of thingy’s (I have to ask why you call ‘it’ that? Just out of curiosity) posts and I have to admit it would be laughable if ‘it’ didn’t actually believe it was contributing to a conversation.

It is always tempting to speculate about the motives and strange personalities of the people who spend their time trolling here, but when you come down to it these speculations are no substitute for watching a real train crash.

Hence the question raised earlier, how many vaccines did your child receive before you realized you’re making a mistake?

If you had read the freakin’ post, you would know that Venna’s neurotypical kids had all had their vaccines on schedule, while her one autistic child had received no vaccines at all before symptoms appeared.

See, his autism developed regressively, the same age as these children whose parents are claiming vaccine injury, but my son didn’t get the vaccines they claim cause autism (due to financial constraints at the time) until well after his symptoms were documented.

Which vaccines?

Anyway, my point is, yes, my son has autism, but there’s no way that vaccines caused it because he didn’t get them. I was 36 when he was born and believe it’s possible I was just too old to have a neurotypical child.

Which vaccines?

I don’t know if that will happen with my son, I don’t know how severely effected he is, but I do know that whining and complaining that vaccines are to blame doesn’t help him at all and rather then focus my energy on a pointless endeavor, I choose to look toward his future and make the most of what we have.

Which vaccines?

Again, how many vaccines did your autistic child get since birth? Please clarify.

LOL! You said exactly what I was going to say to thingy, just more to the point. It’s clear that thingy doesn’t actually read before she/he posts or there would have been a clue, since I’m still vaccinating my children and will continue to do so that I didn’t make a mistake. And thank you for the welcome (everyone else also! :D). If my experience and personal take on the vaccine issue will help some other people to make the choice to vaccinate then I’ve done my part.

@Thingy

Since you don’t know my son and obviously have never had any experience being around a person with autism, your statement that autism is a tragedy not a blessing is going to be ignored with the exception of telling you this: Until you have experienced the life changing view from the eyes of an autistic person, you haven’t really seen the world at all. Get a life and get some brain cells. I hear they’re having a sale at Kmart this week!

Venna, clearly, welcome to RI. You’ve now met the resident trolls (though Jacob is of a different kind). Plese join us. And am I alone in thinking that the repulsive augustine should be banned? Thingy is still, in my opinon, worth going after as a chew toy.
Venna, welcome home.
And your little boy – 100% human – is more than welcome here too.

I loved your posts. Your opinion of your son mirrors how I feel about my two with an ASD (my son is autistic and middle daughter has PDD-NOS (I also have two NT kids)).

Autism is challenging but not horrible. I think concentrating on who your child is and celebrating their triumphs with them while understanding their quirks is key. If I could remove any trace of autism from them, I wouldn’t. Autism didn’t rob me of my children, it is a small part of who they are, and have always been.

My son was diagnosed at almost 3 and has made so much progress (he’s 7 now). I think you will find the next few years to be very productive. Two steps foreword and one back can be frustrating, but when you look back a year you can see the slow, but very real progress. Like a flower growing, you don’t see it growing, but it is.

Your comment was beautiful. It is always wonderful to hear from another parent who feels the way I do. Your son is very fortunate to have such an intelligent and loving mother.

Please ignore the trolls: augustine has gotten simply vile in his comments (he used to be just annoying) and thingy is not sane IMHO.

I don’t have much to add here but my experience and observations, but I have learned so much. I hope you stay, and look foreword to your future comments.

A couple of… uh, things: I am in the peculiar position of knowing a little about psych and writing (oh, don’t ask!). Recently, an issue came up that I have long toyed with: how much can you tell about a person from their writing alone? Answer: lots, but not everything. Freud and Jung tried to understand famous writers, I won’t; others study the writing of children and the mentally ill. My question addresses commenters who follow patterns either annoying or disturbing.

How much of what we read that annoys us is calculated to perturb us, go against the grain, stick out its tongue metaphorically: in short, being a d-ck and as thick as a brick. We got those. They are consistent and in a bizarre way, nearly logical in their opposition to SBM and pattern of showing “evidence”. “Through a looking glass” contrarianism.

Others present more of a conundrum: is it someone with obvious talents playing “crazy”? A clever writer, not following his or her own inclinations- which would be discernable as more normal- could read up on psychiatric examples and re-create the usual “style” of SMI. It wouldn’t read like James Joyce, I can assure you: it would be even more unpleasant and without the sly winks to underlying scaffolds of meaning, myth, and analogy. People can disguise their intentions and identity to a degree that varies with their talent. To be perfectly honest, I think that I could manage it, but ’tain’t my cup of tea.

I doubt that a writer would keep up this off-putting, un-rewarding style for long : why? a good joke needs a punch-line and this just drones on. So I believe we might have at least two real deals here: cold of affect, impersonally bizarre, hard to fathom, makes you squirm a bit, idiosyncratic use of language: in short,”Thing-lish” lit.

@ Denice: I too, have been doing some armchair analysis of the two troll tag team. I suspect that we are dealing with a sock puppet here.

IMO, it is too coincidental that the harmless, vacuous but annoying Thingy, has now turned vicious with certain patterns of speech and phrasing of its insults… that are uniquely Augustinian.

There is no end game here, no gotchas…merely the brain droppings of one (or two) deranged minds who have no lives, no friends, no one who cares a whit about them. And, they are too stupid to realize that they are the objects of our derision.

I wonder where “Chris” is…she has a wealth of knowledge about networking amongst parents of disabled kids.

Thank you very much. I spent most of the day working in my garden. Sometimes though, I would just stop and take in the intoxicating aroma of the wisteria and roses.

Venna, you posts are wonderful and sometimes quite familiar. My son is 22 and I know very well about the Mercury Militia on disability support groups. The one I was on for my son’s disability was quite wonderful for the first few years (back when we had a phone modem), but then we got those who insisted it was the vaccines. I asked them several times how vaccines could have caused his seizures when he was two days old (before HepB vaccine). They became more strident about five years ago, and when I found out one of the mothers who kept pushing a certain doctor actually worked for him… I left.

Like, lilady, the best networking group was through the school district.

Th1Th2 started to be called Thing1Thing2 at the ScienceBasedMedicine blog where she first showed up. It is a reference to the trouble makers of Dr. Seuss’ Cat in the Hat books. I mostly ignore her, but occasionally post threads where she makes to most outrageous claims that are totally divorced from reality.

Others present more of a conundrum: is it someone with obvious talents playing “crazy”? A clever writer, not following his or her own inclinations- which would be discernable as more normal- could read up on psychiatric examples and re-create the usual “style” of SMI.

Hmmm, suddenly I find myself wondering if one could turn some machine learning techniques at this type of problem and see if the posts can be separated into real “crazy” vs. made up crazy.

@Kae
No shots while pregnant, never had a flu shot because I usually don’t get sick so don’t see the need for it. Occasionally though I’ll get something but I don’t know if it’s flu or just a cold.

@Chris
I’ve found, if I want to participate in any parent support group, unless I want to be yelled out by the few that are anti-vax in the group, I pretty much just state my feelings on the subject and leave it at that. It always comes around, so far it’s been twice since mid May. Probably because of all the anti-vax goings on. It really is unfair that I can’t freely discuss it in those situations because I have literally been told I’m stupid and uneducated and don’t know what I’m talking about and I’m insulting them and their child for not believing they are vaccine injured. I’ve received physical threats of violence by some people even. It’s enough to make a person want to go live in a cave. I’ve just recently gotten a lot of information about support groups and things like that. We shall see what I’m able to find in the next week or so. 😀

Thanks! I’m just beginning to realize how much is really available on the Internet that is in fact accurate and logical in nature rather then just screamer raving anti-vaccine fanatics. Trying to hold any kind of logical or common sense discussion with them is like trying to spit into the wind.

As someone who is both Pro-Vaccine and Pro-Cannabinoid therapy for autism, It is not easy to find like-minded people.
However, the Anti Vax crowd are confused, because one is pro-pharma, the other is anti-pharma.
So they are interested in the therapy right up until the point where they ask, so I reveal, that I believe that vaccines work and do not cause autism.
This is the point at which the herbal therapy suddenly becomes, in their eyes, an attempt to kill, corrupt and poison their children!

They truly are dangerous and nuts. They are the real ‘terror threat’. CIA should just decapitate the whole organisation, and take their poor autistic children into care where at least they will be wanted.

Just as corporations exhibit features of Psychopathy.
Cults, like the anti-vax cult, exhibit features of Borderline.
Be aware, stay safe!

@ lilady: I’m of the opinion that at least 2 are SMI; there are a slew of annoyances, at least one who sockpuppets- Smarty ( augie likes his own excretions too much to sign under another ‘nym, except very occasionally), and possibly a shill for BigPlacebo- more on this later. The first group is problematic because we, as concerned citizens, don’t want to do wrong and scare them off of professionals.

@ Narad: the “subtle errors” and persistence leads me to guess that it’s real. Someone f–king with us would be more concerned with “keeping” the audience and would be less tangental.

@Venna: there is a lot of useful information on the internet. You just have to get past the trolls.

I see Chris kindly explained where “thingy” came from. TH1TH2 reminded too many of us of Dr Seuss’s characters. He/she/it started blathering at first at Science-Based Medicine (if you haven’t gone there yet, you may want to do so; there’s a lot of good information there about vaccines) and eventually oozed its way over here.

Little augie is a plaything that used to be cute, but now is becoming vile and obnoxious.

As a mother of 6, you have your hands full, but also have the experience to know early on when something is different from birth. Many parents don’t so they blame everything and anything besides genetic chance. And while I know some studies have linked autism to older parental (mother and/or father) age, I am not sure how great a contribution it may be.

(Oh, and wait till they start blaming you for the mercury in your fillings, the vaccines you had as a teen, whatever. Since your son had no vaccines until after diagnosis, they’ll find SOME way to link it to vaccines and/or mercury).

Oh, and a thought… There’s John Fryer, Chemist, wandering in the wilderness with his lamp looking for the “non-existent” unvaccinated child with autism. Here’s a perfect example for him. Not that he’d believe it, of course.

@ Venna: I was able to locate the NICHCY (National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities) website. Each of the agencies in each state are listed for early intervention (infants) and pre-school programs (ages 3-5). I don’t see any listings for the “notorious” groups that operate on the internet.

Chris, Kristen: Would this be a good start? Don’t forget, my youngster was born in 1976 when there was no internet. Unfortunately, when you key in Autism, the “notorious” groups come up along with nutritionists and CAM practitioners offering “cures”.

My first introduction to services being offered locally through the State, came through my buddy who I met when my son entered an early intervention program age 14 months old. My husband and I took classes to teach us the principles of “behavior modification” and I embarked on this program with the support of a psychologist and speech therapist who came out to my home to evaluate my son and made home visits frequently to set up tasks such as choosing a toy, differentiating between colored small blocks and a rewards system. There were no aversives, only rewards (a small drop of Hershey’s syrup) Gradually the syrup was eliminated and praise became his reward.

By going into his world of very limited abilities, I was able to develop his very limited social abilities and the self-stim, self injurious behaviors stopped.

My child was profoundly mentally retarded and behavior modification worked for us. There are so many benefits that are derived for children who are mildly or moderately intellectually impaired or who are in the normal range. Yes, I am a strong proponent of Applied Behavior Analysis, to assist the child and for the great satisfaction it brings to parents as they observe real progress.

It really is unfair that I can’t freely discuss it in those situations because I have literally been told I’m stupid and uneducated and don’t know what I’m talking about and I’m insulting them and their child for not believing they are vaccine injured. I’ve received physical threats of violence by some people even.

Yup. Been there, done that.

Though it was a real life baby/mom group of mostly “regular kids” where I asked not to talk about my son’s trips to the neurologist and speech therapists as he was being diagnosed. It was because of this that I delighted to find a group when we got a modem and an account on Compuserve. I found people willing to discuss this issues rationally on the Compuserve forums and Usenet newsgroups.

It was later with a listserv that I had folks from the Mercury Militia tell me I was dangerous for not being against vaccines.

Um, MI Dawn, it is Tony Bateson who is wandering around with his lamp. John Fryer, Chemist just makes a bunch of unsupported claims and gets upset when you tell him for the umpteenth time that SIDS was halved due to vaccines, and he really needs to document his claims.

Yeah, I’ve already been attacked by an anti-vaccine chiropractor about the ‘toxic load’ I carry and my mother carried and my maternal grandmother carried which I gave to my first born who ended up with autism.

I actually took great pleasure in pointing out that I HAD no toxic load as only had one vaccine ever growing up (lots of people on my mother’s side of the family were chiropractors, kind of became a family business). My mother was a child prior to vaccines being required so she didn’t get any either, my maternal grandmother was a child prior to most vaccines being created therefore no toxic load there and my only child with autism wasn’t my first born but my last. His only response to that was, “Well in your case it’s obviously genetics. But that doesn’t change the fact that for everyone else it’s vaccines and the toxic load handed down from each generation before.”

Really? That was the best he could do? Granted this was on YouTube and from a guy who had video of himself performing a chiropractic adjustment on a newborn in the hospital.

I actually know of several parents who have unvaccinated children with autism. They didn’t vaccinate because of the autism scare. When their child was diagnosed with autism even without the vaccines, they went ahead and vaccinated anyway. Funny that…

Chris, Kristen: Would this be a good start? Don’t forget, my youngster was born in 1976 when there was no internet. Unfortunately, when you key in Autism, the “notorious” groups come up along with nutritionists and CAM practitioners offering “cures”.

My son was born in 1988, we got a modem at about 1995, so I had to rely on the school group. There was also the local Children’s Hospital, which has set up support groups for parents of all sorts of kids, and its own groups for autism.

Actually, there was a fellow by the name of “John” that showed up over at the Vaccine Times’ article on Blaylock, spouting the “no unvaccinated autistics” line in much the same way as Bateson (“I’ve been looking” etc.). “John” also brought up the “no autistic Amish” nonsense.

Todd, wasn’t that a “Jim”? Oh, and he got particularly nasty when Ms. Stagliano’s youngest daughter and an article in the current Vaccine Times was pointed out to him.

The LBRB articles where Tony Bateson had several parents tell him they had unvaccinated children with autism have disappeared during the move to the new server. Mr. Bateson was told several times about the youngest Stagliano child, and finally gave the excuse that he had not been contacted personally.

“John” might be John D. Stone who usually is part of a tag team along with Clifford G. Miller….both listed on the website: Well Known Trolls.

For sheer entertainment value I like to view the listings on the web at: Encyclopedia of American Loons, where you will find every type of (political, religious, conspiracy, medical and especially vaccine) lunatics.

@ Chris: SIDs rates also plummeted during the last fifteen years in the United States by educating parents of infants through the “Back to Sleep” program…first implemented in Scandinavia, where SIDs is almost wiped out.

You mention the younger child of Kim Stagliano…did she opt out of vaccines for her younger child….who was later diagnosed along the Spectrum? I recall a case in my State and reported by our State coordinator of the VFC program, where a child suffered a major neurological event soon after an immunization. Compensation was provided through the VICP. A second child was born and guess what…the unvaccinated child experienced the same neurological event at the same age (15 months) as the first child. Why don’t these parents “go public” with their stories and become advocates for childhood immunization?

Kim has three daughters, all on the spectrum. The first two received some vaccines (not sure if they were fully vaccinated or not), but the youngest didn’t receive any vaccines. IIRC, Kim blames a vaccine she received, herself, at some point, which resulted in her youngest daughter being “vaccine injured,” despite never receiving a single one.

(And for those who don’t know, Kim Stagliano is one of the managing editors of Age of Autism.)

Something I feel compelled to share after my son and I visited his doctor on Friday. In discussing options for his care as we go forward (he’s a new pediatrician for us as all the other one’s we’ve seen kept moving practice or moved out of state) and the difficulties that autism will present to his care (my son becomes VERY agitated in a doctor’s office and particularly when people he doesn’t know try to touch him). I expressed to the doctor my feelings on his development and also told him I am not one of those parents who believes vaccines cause autism. The doctor literally visibly relaxed when I said that and was stunned into silence for a few seconds before he said to me, “Thank you for that. You don’t know how hard it is as a physician to convince people vaccines are for their children’s protection and won’t cause autism. It’s nice to know there are parents that don’t believe it.” His gratitude toward me saying something so simple and obvious, to me anyway, was quite touching.

@ Todd W: Thanks for the information on Stagliano. I would imagine that personal integrity comes into play here; if I were dead wrong about vaccines causing autism and responsible for misinformation spreading across the internet, I would state so. For some, I guess, the notoriety of being a minor celebrity on an anti-vax site and the adoration of sycophants, is a more powerful motivator.

BTW, on June 4th the Boston Public Health Commission issued a press release about a new case of measles in a Vermont resident. The 17 year old confirmed case “volunteered” and exposed people who visited the New England Aquarium in Boston. I wasn’t able to find any measles advisory at Vermont websites, but the case is “confirmed” and the last measles case…prior to this one…in Vermont, was reported in 2001.

lilady, an amusing comment by Ms. Stagliano that Todd left off is her reponse to a question about her unvaccinated child having autism. She blames it in part on the mercury in vaccines she (Kim) received, with the wonderful followup of: “You know, the genetic part.”

The 17 year old confirmed case “volunteered” and exposed people who visited the New England Aquarium in Boston.

OOooH. A measle case. Exposed who? The vaccinated?

I also heard somebody down at the local town square had chickenpox. chilling!

When do you think the government will do another compliance experiment again like they did with the swine flu compliance experiment? What scary invisible monster will it be next? It’s been 2 years since we’ve had one and this attempted measles scare isn’t working.

On two afternoons, anyone who visited the main aquarium building would likely have been exposed. Most of them were probably vaccinated, but there may have been some who weren’t (either by choice or due to medical reasons). There may also have been some for whom the vaccine was ineffective, for whatever reason.

Likely, there were plenty of children passing through. Given that about 90%-95% of those who are susceptible will be infected and high traffic for the aquarium, there are good odds that someone else may have been infected. So, it could very likely spread.

But, then, you don’t care about anyone else, so even then, you will callously make light of any and every case, despite the 1 in 20 complication rate for measles.

Most of them were probably vaccinated, but there may have been some who weren’t (either by choice or due to medical reasons).

If by choice then duh, it’s by choice. If due to a medical condition then maybe they should also be worried about cold and flu viruses and every other “dirty little bug”. How will the measle vaccine herd protect them from that? An ineffective measles vaccine is also called vaccine failure. It didn’t work as advertised. Failure.

Ooh! Augie flirts with the Nirvana fallacy! And ignores the whole kids being susceptible because their parents (not them) decided to keep them vulnerable. And ignores the potential for spreading of the outbreak, when high immunization rates would reduce that probability. And ignores the potential for complications. And so on and so forth.

@ Todd W. Yes, the press release specifically identified an enclosed building where the volunteer worked as the site of exposure, where there is a much higher risk for transmission…as opposed to an open air exhibit area. An examining room at a physician’s office, clinic or emergency room where a “suspect” case of measles is isolated, must be sealed up and remain unoccupied for two hours after the patient leaves the room, to avoid transmission of measles.

Children under one year of age are susceptible as well, because they would not have received even one MMR vaccine. Approximately 5 % of young children do not receive immunity with the first of two MMR vaccines…so a small number of toddlers would also be at risk.

Augustine, are you familiar with the phrase “judge not, lest you be judged by the same measure?” Remember post 316 where you said:

Save your anecdotes. The posters on this board are not interested in autism. They are interested in vaccine compliance. Autism just so happened to perk their ears up a few years ago because it threatened vaccine compliance.

You are in no position to complain about people making moral judgements about you, especially when they have more solid evidence.

Oh. You got me. What a zinger. Man, am I outclassed. Such intellect! Such pizazz! Truly, no one can face the stunning, rapier wit you display.

Now, really, why are you so incredibly callous about other people? I’ve yet to see you show the slightest shred of compassion or caring for anyone else. You might have missed it, but I did, in fact, ask my question in all seriousness.

I posited on a prior post that troll(s) were told by their mommies that their lack of education, lack of gainful employment, lack of critical reasoning and anti-social behavior is a result of vaccine injury. Troll(s) your mommies lied to you.

The trolls also have some kinky masochistic hangups, manifested by their repeated postings and the drubbings they so richly deserve.

I’m not so sure, lilady. Augustine has a depressing monotony, a kind of one-note frustration to all of his posts, and a whiny persecution complex: whereas id1id2 is much more prolix, a little lighter, and has more of the traits of a mall god botherer to her(?). Both of them have severely sub-optimal thinking processes, but there seems to be a different flavour to their posts, a different smell as it were – you know, shit versus dead prawns.
Add to this that, really, augustine isn’t clever enough to pretend to be anything other than a morose, hateful half-wit and I would say that the evidence favours 2 stupid, wretched existences rather than one.

Children under one year of age are susceptible as well, because they would not have received even one MMR vaccine.

Sure they did. This vaccine was highly recommended, it was given, and children younger than 9 months had received it. You don’t see this vaccine anymore because they had to pull it out of the market because of increased fatality. Do you which vaccine is it ol’ nurse?

@augie – Maternal antibody protection (I’m assuming you mean through breast milk) will only protect a child completely until the age of 4 – 5 months at which time they begin to produce their own antibodies and what they might get from the mother is useless to them. Most children aren’t exclusively breast fed beyond the age when they start eating solid food. It’s recommended to breast feed as a supplement to solid food until at least one year, but it isn’t necessary for the child to grow and develop and be healthy, it’s a comfort, bonding thing then. And just to clarify, the article you linked to was from 1977 which essentially shows that in children 12 months old, the MMR vaccine wasn’t as effective in prevention as they would like to see and that’s why it was changed to vaccinating with MMR at 15 months. Your article in essence supports what we are saying here…

@Thingy – The MMR was never pulled from the market, what ARE you talking about? The average age the MMR is given is 15 – 18 months of age for the first dose and then about 4 to 5 for the second, it’s never been given prior to that in my experience of raising and vaccinating 6 children born since 1990. Since my son just got his second dose MMR on Friday, I’d say your information is uhh, incorrect. Try looking up some information before you open your mouth, or in this case reach for your keyboard. You might just save yourself some embarrassment and also gain some knowledge about the subject you are trying to converse about. Or perhaps you are speaking about the MMRV which included measles, mumps, rubella and varicella? Your facts are still incorrect though, it didn’t cause death but an increased *risk* of febrile seizures (which is seizures induced by a fever). It might still be a good idea to read up on the topic of discussion because you are clearly not as informed as you pretend to be.

Ugh Troll, did they ever teach you to do research in contemporary medical/immunology literature, or even to read?

Ugh troll, provides a citation from 1977 from the Journal of Pediatrics…my simple math skills learned in first grade informs me that the citation is 34 years old.

Here is a new citation (April, 2011) from the CDC Pink Book, Measles, page 179:

(Referring to the 1989-1991 resurgence of measles)

“Incidence rates for infants were more than twice as high as those in any age groups. The mothers of many infants who developed measles were young and their measles immunity was most often due to vaccination rather than infection with wild virus. As a result a smaller amount of antibody was transferred across the placenta to the fetus, compared with antibody transfer from mothers who had antibody titers resulting from wild virus infection. The lower quantify of antibody resulted in immunity that waned more rapidly, making infants susceptible at a younger age than in the past.”

Ugh troll, this is Immunology 101 that I learned in my first year of college prior to graduating with a B.Sc.-Nursing. I received on-the-job training at the health department-division of infectious diseases control. You are so wrapped up in your false beliefs about vaccines that you are totally clueless about epidemiology and the education/skill set required to work in public health.

Me thinks Ugh troll is upset because I continually pose the questions:

Where did you go to school?

Where are you gainfully employed?

(I also busted the troll for his narrow minded views, his lack of gainful employment and for the on-the-dole POS scam artist he is)

Try looking up some information before you open your mouth, or in this case reach for your keyboard. You might just save yourself some embarrassment and also gain some knowledge about the subject you are trying to converse about.

How many people here have I embarrassed? You don’t know since you’re new here. Ask lilady, Chris, Gray, CG, Krebiozen et al. You will have your turn soon too. Oh actually now. So you think the measles virus had a clean record since it was licensed back in the 1960’s? How many times do you think they took the vaccine off the market because of fatalities? You don’t have any idea. You didn’t even know the measles vaccine was also administered in children less than nine months old. You’re a typical pretender just like the rest. And don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.

Your rhetorical questions will forever go unanswered, lilady.
Brief, stylistic comparison, however.
Thing: Do you which vaccine is it ol’ nurse?
Could be augie, illiterate – has it used this term before?
Augie: “Did they ever teach you about maternal fetal antibody transfer, lilady? Have you been taught to be so hell bent on vaccine compliance that actual protection doesn’t matter to you?”
Definitely augie. Word salad, “hell bent”, I hate everyone, especially me.
Thing “That’s what I’m talking about confused Mom. Now fix your disabled child and deny that you’re responsible for it. Tsk tsk.”
Now that does sound like augie. Perhaps you’re right. OK, let me see….

“Incidence rates for infants were more than twice as high as those in any age groups. The mothers of many infants who developed measles were young and their measles immunity was most often due to vaccination rather than infection with wild virus. As a result a smaller amount of antibody was transferred across the placenta to the fetus, compared with antibody transfer from mothers who had antibody titers resulting from wild virus infection. The lower quantify of antibody resulted in immunity that waned more rapidly, making infants susceptible at a younger age than in the past.”

Missed the point(s) again. It isn’t me, or anyone else here you are causing embarrassment to but yourself because the statements that come from you are convoluted at best and down right nonsensical at worst.

Since it is no longer the 1960’s the info you are providing isn’t current and has nothing to do with the 2011 measles outbreak but is just history and in this discussion pointless. Don’t get the measles vaccines confused with MMR which is what is the topic of discussion and as I clearly said, in my experience of vaccinating 6 children since 1990 (that’s over 20 years if you do the math) the MMR has never been administered prior to one year old. In fact, my older 5 received it at 18 months of age. My youngest got his first dose at 3 when we got him vaccinated to attend the Special Education Pre School.

And again, we are talking about now and children who are under the age of one in 2011, not 1977. A child born prior to 15 months ago most likely will not yet have received the first dose of MMR vaccine yet, therefore anyone under the age of 12 months, who was at the aquarium, was exposed to measles.

– Maternal antibody protection (I’m assuming you mean through breast milk) will only protect a child completely until the age of 4 – 5 months at which time they begin to produce their own antibodies and what they might get from the mother is useless to them.

Hey bozzo. Even before the baby is born, there is transplacental transfer of maternal antibodies already taking place. Yes, breastfeeding is also an essential part of what is called naturally acquired passive immunity. Maternal antibodies from breastmilk are NOT useless you fool. They protect the newborn from mucosal pathogens like the measles virus by establishing mucosal immunity. Dig deeper.

How many people here have I embarrassed? You don’t know since you’re new here. Ask lilady, Chris, Gray, CG, Krebiozen et al. You will have your turn soon too.

I suppose it is a bit embarrassing to see someone make such an idiot of themselves and apparently not even realize it. You come out with the most moronic and ignorant nonsense about immunology I have ever seen.

I’m guessing you are referring to the Urabe mumps strain used in vaccines that sometimes (1 in 143,000 cases) caused aseptic meningitis, and was blamed by some for deaths but that was never proven. It is no longer used in most countries. Post marketing surveillance of vaccines works. Your point?

Th1Th2 seems to regard himself or herself as the argumentative equivalent of a chess grandmaster, playing multiple games simultaneously and winning them all… thanks to the combined powers of arbitrary word re-definitions, dishonesty, and simply boring people until they give up and do something else.

*Maternal antibodies passed to the fetus during pregnancy and the newborn in breast milk.

The antibodies protect infants against the disease in the FIRST MONTHS OF LIFE, but the protection has a cost: its presence also interferes with the generation of a natural immune response to vaccination. As a result, the majority of infants receive measles vaccine at age 12 to 15 months, when maternal antibodies disappear.*

If a child is breast fed, and let’s face it not all of them are, then the mother’s antibodies will protect a child through the first months of life, infancy, but not into toddler-hood. But the child is not able to respond to a vaccine that would be administered for measles virus because of the mother’s antibodies being present. So they wait until the mother’s antibodies are free of the child’s system before administering the MMR to allow the child it’s own immunity. How much deeper do you need me to dig? All this is easily found by just typing a question or relevant phrase into Google. Are you looking for people to do the research for you? Are you that lazy?

I must ask, how many children do you have? What are their ages? And is their father more intelligent then you because I fear for their futures if they inherited your dizzying intellect.

Once more, allow me to apologise to all here. I am still having an unsuccessful and extremely unhappy childhood. I regard myself as uneducated and unloved and I have many deep dark issues that have consistently poisoned my relationships with everyone.
I have no knowledge whatsoever of science and medicine, and have unfortunately chosen this blog to demonstrate my inadequacy. I know that I need to seek help.
I do not have any children.
That, at least, is true.
x augie

Thanks Anthony! I have read a few of RI’s blogs before now but I’ve not commented on them. I guess when you’ve been shouted down in the anti-vax forums you get slightly gun shy, ya know? Sometimes I might even be just looking for information. I certainly don’t know everything there is to know about autism, immunology and vaccines, but I’m at least willing to learn. There’s a lot of information out there and it’s difficult to sift through the chaff and get the kernels of truth and wisdom.

Maternal antibody protection (I’m assuming you mean through breast milk) will only protect a child completely until the age of 4 – 5 months at which time they begin to produce their own antibodies and what they might get from the mother is useless to them.

You fool. Do you even realize that you’re talking nonsense? Take note of the bolded part.

But the child is not able to respond to a vaccine that would be administered for measles virus because of the mother’s antibodies being present. So they wait until the mother’s antibodies are free of the child’s system before administering the MMR to allow the child it’s own immunity.

So bozzo, why are you contradicting yourself? Why is that MMR not given immediately after the age of 5 months? Dig deeper, fool.

Hmm, this is just too pathetic to continue. Thingy just won’t ever get… anything.

It isn’t contradictory, if we are speaking of maternal antibodies in general. After a period of time they are no longer present in breast milk, thus the child is no longer receiving them from the mother and begins to build their own immunity as they are exposed to things in their environment. The mother’s antibodies diminish while the child’s own immune system takes over.

For measles specifically, it appears data show maternal measles antibodies linger longer then other antibodies in the child, particularly if the mother’s immunity is from the actual disease rather then a vaccination. Therefore, the administration of the vaccine to the child is held off until 15 – 18 months to make sure no maternal antibodies are still present so the child’s own immune system can fight it off and he/she can develop it’s own immunity. It really isn’t that difficult a concept to grasp, why are you having such a hard time with it? And I’d appreciate if you didn’t insult me anymore. While put downs such as ‘bozzo’ and ‘fool’ really don’t mean a lot coming from you, it’s still annoying. Kind of like that fly that keeps buzzing around your head no matter how many times you swat it away.

The antibodies protect infants against the disease in the FIRST MONTHS OF LIFE, but the protection has a cost: its presence also interferes with the generation of a natural immune response to vaccination. As a result, the majority of infants receive measles vaccine at age 12 to 15 months, when maternal antibodies disappear.*

That is the expected protective function of maternal antibodies naturally acquired by newborns against infections, that is, against natural infection and vaccine-induced infections. Hence, measles vaccines are NOT recommended in the first months of life when maternal antibodies are dominant. The measles vaccine virus will be neutralized by maternal antibodies (passive immunity). Therefore, infection-promoters like you will have to wait for the opportunity wherein induced-infection will be likely when maternal antibodies are no longer present—that’s why bozzo, children of age 12 months are intentionally infected with the live measles virus.

WOW, did that really just happen? What mistake? Your argument just proved my point! Maybe back in the 1930s parents would purposefully infect their children with disease when someone else near by contracted it, but that was back before vaccines did the job of creating the immunity these parents seek without the child having to live through the disease and the potential risks involved.

Weren’t you just last week screaming about how people don’t get sick because they avoid infection? Now who’s contradicting themselves?

Don’t bother arguing with Thingy. She has her own bizarro definition of “infection.” Her error has been explained to her over and over, both here and at Science-Based Medicine, yet she persists in using the same, misguided and erroneous definition.

To paraphrase Rep. Barney Frank, talking to Thingy is like talking to a dining room table.

Yeah, I have realized that but for some reason it causes me physical pain to see someone go through life completely ignorant yet thinking they know what they are talking about. I try to offer assistance to learn. Often times it’s appreciated, sometimes it’s an exercise in futility, like now. My bad, thingy will just be ignored from now on because to continue in this vein will only inflate it’s already over-inflated ego.

So you think the measles virus had a clean record since it was licensed back in the 1960’s?

Wow, they actually licensed the virus? Can we just revoke the licenses for all kinds of viruses and then sue them?
Thingy is becoming curiouser and curiouser.

@MMR(V) vaccine
To my knowledge it isn’t administered before the age of 11 months because it carries an additional risk before that.
And since measles are a much greater problem in Europe than the US, this is also the usual age when it’s given. So that age is unrelated to any maternal protection that may come with brestfeeding.

Oh, btw, how should mothers get the antibodies to transmit to their children? Risk the serious complications of a wild-type infection or just getting vaccinated themselves? Sorry, you can’t have your cake and eat it.
Unless, of course, you suggest that we should all get all those nasty diseases at some point in our lives because that’s a good thing.

Maternal antibodies through breast milk no longer protect a child after 3 months postpartum in most cases.

My..my..my.. Wherever did you hear breast milk “no longer protect a child after 3 months postpartum”? Do you know that breastfeeding will continue to provide newborns with maternal antibodies for as long as breast milk is produced? Do you know that WHO emphasizes continued breastfeeding up to 2 years of age or beyond? That was a very irresponsible statement of yours let alone dangerous.

Essentially, they are no longer present in breast milk after that point.

Geez. Did you ever read the abstract? I see where you got confused. You’ve misconstrued serum maternal antibodies as the same as secretory antibodies found in breast milk. Read.

Maternal serum was available from early pregnancy, delivery, and 3 months postpartum.

That does not in any way pertain to breast milk (just imagine colostrum in early pregnancy?? And where’s the hungry bambino??)

Well, it does not because measles virus is NOT an enterovirus. But that is not the point. Breast milk, not only protects the gut (from enterovirus) but also coats the upper respiratory tract and oral mucosa from other mucosal pathogen such as the measles virus.

The antibodies protect infants against the disease in the FIRST MONTHS OF LIFE, but the protection has a cost: its presence also interferes with the generation of a natural immune response to vaccination. As a result, the majority of infants receive measles vaccine at age 12 to 15 months, when maternal antibodies disappear.*

Do you see the contradiction here? What do you mean by FIRST MONTHS OF LIFE? Is it 3 months, 4-5 months or 12-15 months? Whatever that is, is it also the time when maternal antibodies disappear? You’ve got a lot of numbers in your head you don’t even know where to start.

So they wait until the mother’s antibodies are free of the child’s system before administering the MMR to allow the child it’s own immunity.

But you said ….

Maternal antibody protection (I’m assuming you mean through breast milk) will only protect a child completely until the age of 4 – 5 months at which time they begin to produce their own antibodies

So why do you have to wait until the age of 12-15 months for measles vaccination when maternal antibodies no longer “interfere” at the age 4-5 months or as early as 3 months like you claimed it to be?

Who said mothers need to get infected or have to have a history of all infectious diseases to provide her newborn with antibodies? Who told you it’s a requirement?

Wait…. what?

Are you saying that mothers will provide antibodies to their children if the mothers have *never* been exposed to the disease? Or are you misreading Giliell’s statement that you seem to think we should be exposed to all diseases?

Because one of those is just stupid, and the other is dishonest, and either could be true of you. I’d just like to know which it is.

*sticks fingers in ears and says* “LaLaLaLaLaLa” I’m done! It is pointless. I’ve never seen anyone talk in circles so much or take things QUITE so out of context before…

So … How ’bout them Yankees? (not really a Yankee’s fan, just trying to get off this subject because it’s painful to see such ignorance)

I was researching last night to see if thee measles outbreak has touched Oregon, where I live, and it’s really difficult to find accurate information. Does anyone have a good reliable link to the complete and updated story?

The antibodies protect infants against the disease in the FIRST MONTHS OF LIFE, but the protection has a cost: its presence also interferes with the generation of a natural immune response to vaccination.

Venna, you and Lilady have confused yourselves.
If an infant has maternal fetal antibodies then it would not NEED a vaccine. And could you give sound reasoning as to why the date of the article 1977 no longer applies? Is it just your new is in and old is out mantra or do you have anything substantial to negate this article and it’s implications for protection and vaccine compliance.

When you try to fit every child into a box and treat them all the same by giving them the same shots in the same time frame this is the type of problems you run into.

You have fallen victim to propaganda thinking. You believe that vaccination is the only protection from measles virus and if less than 1 year old hasn’t had the vaccine then they will get sick and possibly die. Your continual statements that less than 1 year olds are to young to vaccinate and therefore at risk is factually wrong. All less than1 yo are not at great risk.

The 12 month Measles vaccine recomendation is a broad policy. Obviously it doesn’t fit everyone. If the recommendation was to vaccinate at 6 mos then there would be many more vaccine failures than later mos. The CDC believes that if vaccinees wait until 15 mos. that the majority(population) of maternal fetal protection will be gone. So guess what they do? They arbitrarily establish 1 year as the age. Is it science? No it’s a guess based on policy. They need conformity so this mass rounding up can be easier on them.

And the pink book quote that lilady cites demonstrates that wild measles infection confers GREATER protection to the infant than the vaccine conferred protection. It shows a new vaccine phenomen. “The lower quantity of antibody resulted in immunity that waned more rapidly, making infants susceptible at a younger age than in the past.” This is BECAUSE of the vaccine.

Per CDC Pink Book in 1963, the highest incidence was among 5-9 year olds.

Mass vaccine lovers don’t like maternal fetal antibody protection because they hinder vaccine efficacy and they pose a small problem for compliance.

Ugh troll, did you read the 2011 Pink Book statement I provided that clearly states that children whose maternal passed immunity against measles was somewhat stronger and lasts longer if that immunity was a result of actual infection in the mother…as opposed to more recent scientific findings of maternal immunity that is present in the immunized young mother.

After I thoroughly debunked your cherry picked 34 year old citation with newer scientific epidemiology of measles immunity and transmission, you now quote something that you state you located in the 1963 CDC Pink Book. Are you for real?

Why don’t you get some education? I told you that McDonalds was hiring 50,000 entry workers and perhaps you could matriculate into Hamburger U. Sorry, but I don’t think Flipping Burgers 101 or Proficiency in McDonalds Cash Register 101 are “tranferable credits” into a real college. Go back to your cave now, you bore me.

@Venna: wise choice. I rarely respond to either because thingy will either twist your words or create new definitions. Augie is just obnoxious. Sometimes (like augie’s maternal immunity post above) my brains just cry out to correct him, but since he never learns anyway, I won’t always bother. If there is someone new reading, who might be misled, I would answer because I don’t want people who want to learn the truth to learn augie’s lies instead.

@Lilady: well, we all know that 1963 MUST have been a better year than 2011. No MMR vaccine! So the data in the 1963 Pink book MUST be much better than the 2001 Pink book, right? (/sarcasm) Somehow, I doubt augie remembers 1963 from his own personal perspective.

Measles has hit Virginia and New Jersey/New York, much to my dismay. Keeping my fingers crossed because I am a non-converter so at risk (kids fortunately developed immunity from vaccine).

You haven’t “debunked” anything. For the second posting in a row you have talked around your arse and said absolutely NOTHING.

BTW isn’t your highest level of education from the 1960’s. I guess it doesn’t count anymore. You’ve been debunked. Should’ve gone for the doctorate.

Are you arguing that the pink book is wrong? It clearly conveys that infant protection wanes earlier now because the mothers have been vaccinated against measles as opposed to getting wild infection. Mother nature knows more about immunity than a nurse with a needle from 50 years ago.

During the 1989â1991
measles resurgence,… The
mothers of many infants who developed measles were
young, and their measles immunity was most often due
to vaccination rather than infection with wild virus. As a
result, a smaller amount of antibody was transferred across
the placenta to the fetus, compared with antibody transfer
from mothers who had higher antibody titers resulting
from wild-virus infection. The lower quantity of antibody [from the vaccinated mothers]
resulted in immunity that waned more rapidly, making
infants susceptible at a younger age than in the past.[This was in lieu of the epidemiological finding that incidence was 2x as high in infants than any other age group. Previously, before vaccination, the 5-9 yo age group was the largest. This weakening of baby resistance is a direct result of mass vaccinations of the mothers when they were children. ]

@ Venna: I don’t actually follow the Yankees, preferring to watch political commentary and the fools who posture themselves on TV….much more entertaining.

I also enjoy following the posts here (trolls excepted) for the great information. At times Orac’s blogs go a bit over my head…but then some great posters break down the science into simpler terms…truly informative.

I love your recent entry into our group and am in awe of your mental prowess. Six children in Oregon are very fortunate to have you as their mommy.

Well, I’ve officially decided augie is going to get as much of my attention as thingy will. That being none. Have a nice day!

You are going to cause a train wreck on here. These other posters are going to have to dig you out of a lot of holes. You have several factual errors and logical errors in your posts. You’ll make more. I’m certain of it.

Thanks lilady, that’s very sweet of you to say. I don’t watch much TV, well, any TV. We have a TV hooked to a DVD players and it’s pretty much playing various Disney or Pixar movies all day. We don’t have cable so it doesn’t pick up a TV signal anyway. So I guess that’s why I’m so reliant on the Internet for proper news. Sometimes our news station and newspaper is uhh, unreliable. Living in a very liberal community has benefits, especially if you have a child with autism because people are here are generally much more accepting and understanding, but the media will put anything out and label it news even if it’s just well, not. It can sometimes be difficult knowing what is truth and what is smokescreen, although with people like the trolls (love that term by the way) the attitude that glimmers behind the statements are always a dead give away they are not providing news.

now quote something that you state you located in the 1963 CDC Pink Book. Are you for real?

From 1989 through 1991, a dramatic increase in cases occurred. During these 3 years a total of 55,622 cases were
reported

OOOOH, must have been Dr. Andrew Wakefield who caused this. He started the anti vaccine movement you know. There was no problem with sheep herding mentality until he came along.

From 1985 through 1988, 42% of cases occurred in persons
who were vaccinated on or after their first birthday. During
these years, 68% of cases in school-aged children (5â19
years) occurred among those who had been appropriately
vaccinated. The occurrence of measles among previously
vaccinated children (i.e., vaccine failure) led to the recommendationfor a second dose in this age group.

I was having a conversation with my partner the other day and I found he and I have slightly different views on the current vaccine situation, particularly as it relates to the measles outbreaks. He doesn’t follow the anti-vaccine movement and his feelings on it are basically: if people are stupid enough to follow something that isn’t based in actual fact and science then Darwinism takes over and it becomes a natural selection type of situation. In this sense though it’s those who are intellectually superior that will remain while those that fall into the trap of the anti-vaccine faith will be eliminated by the diseases they are so afraid to get the vaccines for. While it’s a harsh point of view (I believe that education should be made available to give everyone every chance to accept logic and reason to avoid the death or maiming because of ignorance) I can kind of see his point.

Is this in the lines of natural selection if people who fall victim to the anti-vaccine movement’s propaganda and die when they get something there is a vaccine for? I know there haven’t been any deaths yet, but if the cases continue to rise, it’s only a matter of time before statistics catch up.

Well, there haven’t been any deaths in the US yet, but, like you, I am sure that eventually we’ll catch up to Europe on cases and deaths. But don’t worry. Unless you are one of little Augie’s imaginary children, you aren’t important anyway.

Venna — the Darwinistic argument makes a sort of surface sense, but given that vaccination opinions are poor predictors of intelligence and other measures of fitness, it’s not likely to make much of a difference. This was also one of the major problems (besides the gigantic moral problem) behind the eugenics movements of the early 20th century — in the end, they weren’t achieving a damn thing, while doing tremendous evil in the process.

This was also one of the major problems (besides the gigantic moral problem) behind the eugenics movements of the early 20th century — in the end, they weren’t achieving a damn thing, while doing tremendous evil in the process.

Eugenics. Wasn’t it originally calling itself Science Based Medicine also?

Are you saying that mothers will provide antibodies to their children if the mothers have *never* been exposed to the disease?

Absolutely. Hence, the term naturally acquired passive immunity.

Or are you misreading Giliell’s statement that you seem to think we should be exposed to all diseases?

Giliell is implying that maternal-derived antibodies only exist if mothers get infected or have had history of the disease otherwise the fetus or newborn will not have immunity against that specific disease. Therefore, Giliell has concluded that mothers MUST be exposed to ALL known infectious diseases particularly those diseases covered by vaccines. Now what kind of 21st century barbarism was that?

Well, Thingy manages to quote Giliell correctly. Thingy’s conclusion is incorrect, but at least he/she/it apparently read what Giliell said (how she interpreted it, on the other hand…)

Thingy: a mother cannot pass on immunity to a fetus/infant if she does not have antibodies to an illness, and a mother does not have antibodies to an illness unless she has been exposed to the illness or had a vaccine to stimulate antibody formation in the first place. A fetus/newborn cannot attain “naturally acquired passive immunity” without maternal exposure which leads to antibody formation. Humans do not create antibodes without a stimulus, either the illness or a vaccine.

There is a bit of a difference between eugenics and the anti-vaccine people and natural selection, to a degree. Trying to limit the people who should reproduce is nearly impossible without sterilization and that is taking away basic human rights. Eugenics is dangerous because without the widely accessible diversity in the gene pool, the second or third generation of people born will be no better off then before the practice would have been started simply because too much inbreeding causes all kinds of problems, not always external or physical in nature. We’d be right back where we started but worse because there would be no genetic diversity available to counter act it.

The anti-vax movement is willful manipulation with misinformation passed off as reputable science. But it is a choice and nobody ever gets ‘forced’ to vaccinate. For those that take the word of those preaching the anti-vax litany without doing the research to find out the truth (nobody can know the truth without looking at both sides of the picture/topic objectively) they *almost* deserve to be naturally selected out of the gene pool by the diseases they could be protected from had they don’t the research properly. Therefore, their example would be a learning tool to those who survive and the next generation will be much wiser because of the previous generations lack of knowledge.

Th1Th2 if the mother hasn’t been exposed to the disease (via natural exposure or vaccine or whatever), where exactly do the antibodies come from?

“Naturally acquired immunity occurs through contact with a disease causing agent, when the contact was not deliberate,”

“Passive immunity is acquired through transfer of antibodies or activated T-cells from an immune host, and is short lived”

So unless you’re proposing that the antibodies are passed down along the maternal line and that they are not short lived but infact last a lifetime, you haven’t explained where they come from if the mother hasn’t been exposed to the disease.

Humans do not create antibodes without a stimulus, either the illness or a vaccine.

You are so very very wrong. Disingenuous. Misinformed. Ignorant.

Wiki–

Natural antibodies

Humans and higher primates also produce ânatural antibodiesâ which are present in serum before viral infection. Natural antibodies have been defined as antibodies that are produced without any previous infection, vaccination, other foreign antigen exposure or passive immunization.

Now do you want an immunophysiologic explanation as to how they are produced? Just let me know.

The fetus/newborn will receive its maternal antibodies regardless of any prior maternal history. Which part of Naturally Acquired Passive Immunity don’t you understand?

Thingy: a mother cannot pass on immunity to a fetus/infant if she does not have antibodies to an illness, and a mother does not have antibodies to an illness unless she has been exposed to the illness or had a vaccine to stimulate antibody formation in the first place.

Well if that’s the case then why are you vaccinating newborns if you know there aren’t pre-existing antibodies that will interact with vaccine antigens since you’re claiming newborns born of mothers without prior disease history are antibody-deprived?

@ triskelethecat, JohnV & Venna: I thought I tossed out the garbage earlier but returning from an errand and opening up the computer, I smell an awful odor…something between dead rotting troll flesh and the mustiness of a cave. Aired out my home now and the reek has just now begun to dissipate.

Venna, I never had a TV…that is until after my son was born…it helped to wile away the interminable nighttime hours while care for the little one.

Orac of course, is one of my favorite bloggers when I want a good dose of reality. I also visit Politifact and Fact Check.org for their analysis of national politics and the pols rhetoric.

I’ve concluded that the trolls here are only here to provide entertainment value to the debate. They actually don’t add anything to the debate. Thingy troll talks around in circles, completely missing the point and only debates for the sake of debate and brings nothing other then our own points back to us. Augie troll is just argumentative, obviously lacking in any actual opinion unless it differs from everyone else’s and gives him an arguing point.

That being the case with the resident trolls here, nothing they say is worth paying attention to other then for a good laugh, and I have definitely found myself laughing at some of the ridiculous things they have posted. May natural selection be kind to them…

Great. Now, that you’ve learned your lesson. Next time, don’t mess with Science and don’t mess with me. OK? So how do you want the crow served? In fairness, I warned you that your turn will come and you’ll be severely humiliated.

Actual Lysol spray is good for rotting garbage and the festering smell of rotten troll flesh. Troll bird droppings should be treated with household bleach and all the rags used to clean the droppings should be incinerated…outside. Fomites that trolls touch or breathe on should also be treated with bleach/rags incinerated as well.

Don’t allow young children to go near trolls or their caves and notify the local police whenever they venture from their caves or crypts. If you spot any of their imaginary children, warn your kids to not play with them…the trollism may rub off on them.

@Thingy: if you are going to quote Wikipedia, at least have the courtesy to quote the WHOLE paragraph, with the citations, to show the information isn’t quite what you imply (emphasis mine):

Humans and higher primates also produce ânatural antibodiesâ which are present in serum before viral infection. Natural antibodies have been defined as antibodies that are produced without any previous infection, vaccination, other foreign antigen exposure or passive immunization. These antibodies can activate the classical complement pathway leading to lysis of enveloped virus particles long before the adaptive immune response is activated. Many natural antibodies are directed against the disaccharide galactose Î±(1,3)-galactose (Î±-Gal), which is found as a terminal sugar on glycosylated cell surface proteins, and generated in response to production of this sugar by bacteria contained in the human gut.[28] Rejection of xenotransplantated organs is thought to be, in part, the result of natural antibodies circulating in the serum of the recipient binding to Î±-Gal antigens expressed on the donor tissue.[29]

So yes. Humans CAN develop antibodies without exposure to an antigen. There is NOTHING there that says that these antibodies can be passively transmitted in pregnancy to protect the newborn nor is it said that these natural immunities will protect against all diseases. And, if you read the original article, it states that the natural antibodies are protective against viral infections if the viruses contain THAT specific antigen:

Human serum contains high levels of antibodies specific for Î±-Gal because the human gut contains bacteria that produce this sugar. Over 2% of serum IgM and IgG antibodies are directed against Î±-Gal. This antibody binds to the membrane of enveloped viruses that contain Î±-Gal antigens and triggers the classical complement cascade, leading to lysis of virions and loss of infectivity.

According to Th1Th2, we all have natural immunity that protects us completely and is passed from mother to child. If that’s true infectious diseases are impossible and must be imaginary. It must be an illusion that more than 95% of people got measles before vaccination, because their natural antibodies protected them and their children from infection. Who knew?

And Augustine claims that the best way to prevent measles in children is allowing children to get measles.

Thingy, so, if the mother has only got your wonderful natural antibodies that would not protect her against wild-type measles if she encountered them, what protection do you think would the baby get from her?

BTW, pleas, learn what irony means

@Venna
On bad days I agree with your partner. But there are always implications:
Most important: children are not to blame for the fact that they have shitty parents. It’s not their fault and they are suffering.
Children of sensible parents are also at risk, whether their vaccination didn’t work, whether they are too young, whether they can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons. They don’t deserve this either.

I think the reason thingy didn’t use the entire paragraph is because it couldn’t understand the second half of it. Therefore, we are back to selective understanding or partial understanding of how science works. If it doesn’t make sense to the thing then it isn’t science and anyone else who can understand it will be “humiliated”!

@Giliell

I know, and I don’t always agree with my partner’s point of view. He can be extremely cynical at best and down right morose at worse. In his defense, he has been hurt a lot in his life so really has a great mistrust and dislike for humanity and society in general. He is of the opinion that death is preferable to life and almost envies people who die prematurely. He’s extremely intelligent, but at the same time has PTSD, anxiety and schizotypal personality disorder which sometimes cross wire his thought processes and can steer him off into not quite scientific or logical paths. He had just mentioned this a couple nights ago and he said it really callously, but I could see his point, in a milder, more compassionate way though.

The problem with the “natural selection” argument is that the things you’re selecting against include having credulous neighbors, and bad luck in which people to trust. You can argue that trusting a parent who has been misled is an example of natural selection, but is selecting the wrong doctor, perhaps on the basis of good ratings in a magazine, really something it’s reasonable to put down as “natural selection”?

The evidence in support of vaccines and the positive changes they’ve had on society is out there in abundance, one just needs to have the patience and perseverance to look for it weed through the anti-vaccine echo chamber and make sure all the information is understood.

I’ve never looked for a doctor in a magazine so not sure how that process works. Usually I call my insurance coverage provider and get a list of covered practitioners from them (obviously if they aren’t covered by my insurance it’s pointless for me to go to them). I’ll visit them each to discuss whatever might be important to me, ask them questions, etc. and choose the one that I feel best suits my needs and that I feel most comfortable with. Since I’m paying them for services, I only intend to give my money and patronage to someone I feel I can support. I thought this is what most people do, am I wrong in that?

But that’s the thing about living where we live in the time that we live. Doctors provide a service and patients are just customers who purchase that service. Like anything else, if the service sucks, take your business elsewhere. Everyone is always entitled to a second opinion from another doctor about anything if one doctor tells you something you aren’t comfortable with. Therefore, anyone who suffers because of misinformation given to them by a doctor kind of has nobody to blame but themselves because doctors are human and fallible and some (I’ve met them, I know they’re out there and that’s usually when I seek that second opinion) are too arrogant to know when they are doing harm versus helping someone. If they are too self important and more concerned with the bottom line or being right, they aren’t really a doctor anymore. They have crossed over into the realm of Andrew Wakefield and company.

Hi Venna: I have a few suggestions for you to evaluate some doctors. The AMA Doctor Finder (website) provides information about AMA physicians and non-AMA physicians.

Also you mentioned in an earlier post that it was a financial strain to provide timely immunizations. Oregon has the federally funded VFC (Vaccines for Children) Program…which provides all the Recommended Childhood Vaccines for uninsured and under-insured children from birth through 18 years of age. You probably can access VFC providers through Oregon’s or your County’s Department of Health websites.

I have been very fortunate with health care coverage…most physicians and specialists in my area are on the list of “preferred providers”. I also live in a nearby suburb of a large city and have many hospitals to chose from…most are university-affiliated teaching hospitals.

Yes, you are right, you are the consumer of medical care and you can take your business elsewhere, should the physician’s service not be to your liking. I’ve done that (on rare occasions) when it came to my son’s medical care…I’ve also “bailed out” of a hospital and hospital emergency room, IV running to schlep my kid to another hospital or called another doctor in, who has privileges in a nearby hospital and transferred him via ambulance. That’s what we do for our kids.

Isn’t it wonderful to have the internet to go armed intellectually before we see a new doctor.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. I’m learning now about all kinds of programs that are available that I didn’t know about when it could have made a difference for my son and getting him immunized on schedule. I am fortunate that during the time he wasn’t immunized he didn’t catch anything, I don’t think I could have forgiven myself for that.

Essentially, when he was 5 months old, I got a new job and in December I got benefits through that job. The company paid for my premiums, but I wanted to add my son and then planned to get him immunized. He was still under a year so hadn’t missed much, but when I found out how much it would cost me each month to add him to my insurance, I just couldn’t afford it (nearly $400 a month and I was only making $11.50 an hour and supporting my household alone). I cancelled adding him, I still got coverage which didn’t cost me anything but I didn’t need it for me so I felt frustrated.

It was a little less then a year later, just a month after we moved into our current apartment that I realized I needed to get my son back on medicaid if I could, he tried to climb the blinds in his bedroom and fell braking both bones in his left forearm. When I lost my job in October and realized I would no longer be able to make the monthly payments on those bills, I emptied my IRA and paid them off with that. Now the only bills I have to worry about are regular monthly bills, rent, electricity, phone/internet.

It was still another year before I was finally able to get my son back on medicaid because they came out with the Healthy Kids program to provide coverage for all children in Oregon regardless of household income (prior to this, I made too much for him to qualify, which I felt was ridiculous, but hey, I don’t make the rules.) It was around the same time he was taken for his evaluation for suspected autism and was found to have profound developmental delays and qualified for Early Intervention and began their services. That was in October 2009 when he was just over 2 and a half. Now he’s four and we are finally getting additional services besides what he’s been getting through Early Intervention, but one less worry for me is, his immunizations are current. If you haven’t ever been in that position, you don’t know how much of a stress that really is. Granted Oregon has a fairly low vaccine exemption rate (I believe in 2004 is was 2.4% exemption. It has gone up since then and in 2010 was 3.6% most likely attributed to the vaccine autism scare). But still people in Oregon are getting their children vaccinated and though there may be a lot of things I disagree with them about (I’m native from AZ and don’t understand the fascination with the Blazers) I’m glad they at least have that kind of common sense, with the exception of Ashland, Oregon.

Even though I had 5 other children, I wasn’t single, I was married and my husband always had a job with medical coverage so I didn’t know what services were available for children or where to look. I know a lot have been added since my other children were little like Viktor too. I’ve been given a lot of information and assistance to find resources from Early Intervention and from OHSU CDRC Autism Clinic and believe it or not Autism Speaks as part of their 100 Day Kit. Anyone can order one and it will be sent for pick up to a FedEx location and it’s tailored to each specific area so don’t have to wade through pages and pages of listing for other states, it only has listing in Oregon and in the Portland Metro area too. Sometimes though, there is a such thing as too much information and my mind has to take a break from it for a couple days or I won’t be able to absorb it all.

Well, now you know my story regarding my son anyway. If you don’t mind, how did your son pass away?

(Special for your Venna) Anthony died peacefully. He was still breathing but totally unconscious when the nurse in his group home was summoned to his bedside. Nurse and EMTs tried resuscitation and he died in the ambulance. Most probably he had a grand mal seizure in his sleep. Two days from now will be the seventh year since he passed.

He was a delightful child, totally dependent wheel-chair bound with spastic quadriplegia, immune suppressed and with blood dyscrasias resulting in internal bleeding episodes.

He lives on in our hearts and in the hearts of the many people whose lives he touched. His heart valves were donated as well as his corneas, so he lives on in the lives of people whose vision was restored and whose broken hearts were mended.

I’m so glad that you are connecting with social services for insurances and for services for Viktor. I recall 40 years ago when my daughter was an infant, our health insurance did not pay for immunizations or “well baby” doctors visits and immunizations (a few less then) were a major expensive. And, there were no free vaccines through the VFC program…I learned how to stretch the budget.

I’m sure you will meet some like-minded mommies through Viktor’s school program…that’s where I met my best buddy when Anthony was 14 months old. We have been through a lot…both families…and neither family could have gotten through it all without the support of our good friends.

It is 1:18 AM here on the east coast and I need my rest…also need to neaten up a bit as friends are coming from Germany for a visit on Friday. So good night, catch you later, I’m sure.

Venna, your story makes my heart hurt. I’m German so I’m living in a country where you have a right to health insurance, so reading again and again about people who cannot get adequate treatment because they cannot get insurance makes my heart hurt and my blood boil

It annoys me greatly that I live in a country where large swaths of the population can be convinced to vote against their own self-interests.

Lower & lower-middle income families file for bankruptcy because of medical debt more than any other cause – either they can’t afford insurance or work lower-wage jobs that don’t provide it.

I don’t understand how making health insurance mandatory is a bad thing. When you compare the amount of money lost every year because of a lack of an ability to pay (plus the cost of an overwhelmed ER system – since those who can’t afford health insurance are also likely to use the ER as their primary care facility – and ERs have to run many more tests to determine diagnosis “no medical histories or personal physician relationships”) – the overall cost to the country is negligible, perhaps a wash, or even less expensive than what we are doing now, adding 40 million people on the insurance rolls, but providing a better measure of care.

@ Lawrence: Oh yes indeed, large swaths of the population have voted against their own self interests. So…the Republicans and Tea Party contingent took over Congress and we see that the Bush tax cuts, set to “sunset” January 1, 2011 have been extended for the wealthy.

The “theory” for this extension is that the wealthy are the “major job creators”…not…not true when Reagan did it 30 years ago, either. Modern day voodoo economics and “trickle down theory” from the Reagan administration.

The whole ‘mandatory insurance for everyone or be fined’ thing has me confused. If I understand it (and please correct me if I am wrong) if a person doesn’t have insurance for themselves and their family they have to pay a fine. What if that person doesn’t earn enough to pay for the cost of insurance for themselves and their family? What if the cost of insurance would mean they can’t pay for other things, like, oh, I don’t know, food? Housing? What happens then? They have insurance so won’t get fined, but they are homeless because they can’t afford rent, or are malnourished and starving because they can’t afford food. How is that going to help anyone? If you have no place to live and no food to eat, going to the doctor isn’t going to help you. I find myself in that situation. We have coverage through welfare, because we don’t have jobs that provide an option for coverage. Maybe I’m confused on how that whole thing is supposed to work.

@lilady *HUGZ* You are so amazing with what you have gone through and harboring no bitterness in your soul. My heart reaches out to you. I’ve not ever lost a child so I can’t fathom what that must be like. You are an inspiration of strength to me though. I appreciate your contributions.

Hi Venna: The takeaway lesson from my prior posting is that there is a world of support out there for you and your family. Also, family can “disappoint”,a few lifelong friends may drift away, but you make new (and better) friends who are the real deal through Viktor. I believe firmly in the kind good nature of people and absolutely strangers as well as doctors and therapists have “gone the distance” for my son and our family.

There is a good lengthy article on the Fact Check.org website about H.R. 3200. Use their search engine, keying in “Twenty-Six Lies about H.R. 3200”

Scrolling halfway down the article and you will find:

“Claim: Page 167: Any individual who doesn’t have acceptable health care (according to the government) will be taxed 2.5 % of income”

This provision IMO is to prevent people who can afford health care, but “opt out” to save money from using the Emergency Room and/or hospital services and then not paying…which drives up the costs of health care for everyone. You have health care; it doesn’t apply to those who have government health care such as Medicaid or CHIP coverage for their children.

My happy, healthy, 12 month old daughter received her MMR shot 12 days ago. Today she is covered in the measles and is apparently having an allergic reaction to the vaccination. We just got back from the doctors office a few hours ago. I’ve been told to wait it out 3-4 days. I am feeling helpless and now second guessing future vaccinations. She also had a reaction to her flu shot received at the age of 6 months. This doesn’t seem right.

txmom – I would have a very in-depth discussion with your pediatrician. That sounds like I very bad reaction & you should take steps with him/her to make sure that everything is okay & there isn’t an underlying problem that may be part of the reaction.

@ txmom: The rash as you describe it really isn’t an allergic reaction…approximately 5 % of people who receive the vaccine develop an allover rash…and your baby is not infectious.

You said your baby had an influenza vaccine 6 months ago and probably didn’t have a second shot of the same vaccine which was the vaccine manufactured for the 2010-2011 flu season. Your little one will require the seasonal 2011-2012 flu vaccine shortly and if your baby did not have a second shot 6 months ago, he/she will require 2 shots this flu season. (Children ages 6 months – 8 years of age require a one time “double shot” giving 4 weeks apart, the first time they receive seasonal influenza vaccine).

There are VISs (Vaccine Information Sheets) for each of the recommended vaccines that you should have been given before your baby received immunizations. The are all available on the internet.

“In children under the age of two, the efficacy of inactivated vaccine was similar to placebo. It was not possible to analyse the safety of vaccines from the studies due to the lack of standardisation in the information given but very little information was found on the safety of inactivated vaccines, the most commonly used vaccine, in young children.”

Hey.
My entire school went on a mass vaccination drive for this whole MMR thing, but now there is a ton of people with it… Was that batch simply null or is there something harsh about the South African strain of Measles.
Thanks for reading, 16 and covered in itchy spots that scare me to death…
🙂

Of course. For example, measles vaccine causing primary measles infection is science-based and evidenced-based. However, to claim that the vaccine has prevented measles infection is pure pseudo-science, myth and fantasy.

Thingy why don’t you tell us about your imaginary career in the health care field? In particular tell us again how you and your colleagues “in the hospital where you work”, *handle a potential exposure to a suspect measles case in the Emergency Room?

* Thingy thinks that containment for measles consists of “terminal disinfection” of the exam room where a suspect measles case was examined.